Gateway to Yucatecan Cuisine

Ah, what a wonderful dish--stuffed chayotes afloat in a gentle sauce that is mostly chicken broth, topped with a bright mixture of tomatoes and onions with an occasional raisin and bit of green olive.

This is the sort of food you encounter at El Portal in Pasadena. Yes, there are the usual Mexican dishes, but El Portal also leads us on a more interesting journey, into realms of Mexican cuisine seldom seen in our restaurants.

The chayotes, stuffed with ground turkey, are as soothing as Mom’s chicken soup. Unfortunately, they won’t appear again for a few weeks. They’re merely one in a long list of daily specials.

And this is the fascination of El Portal. The chayotes turned up on a Thursday, followed on Friday by fish tikinxic, a Yucatecan dish of annatto-marinated sea bass baked in banana leaves. Earlier in the week, there had been pork cooked with tomatoes. And on Saturday, there was chicken simmered with vinegar, onions, whole chiles and Yucatecan spices.

The emphasis is on Yucatecan food because owner Abel Ramirez is from Merida, Yucatan, and his wife, Rosalia, is from Valladolid. The chef is their son, Armando.

This is one restaurant where you may be able to try the Yucatecan honey-anise liqueur Xtabentun. There’s never much around, because it arrives one bottle at a time, whenever Ramirez or a relative returns from Yucatan.

But tequila is another matter. The drink list names more than 20 varieties. In actuality, there are 48, and Ramirez is working up to 100. On June 12, he’ll stage a tequila tasting, one of a string of special events such as art shows, lectures and holiday parties that make this more than an eating place. And there is live music every week: mariachis on Friday nights, guitar music on Saturdays.

But back to food. Certain Yucatecan dishes are always on hand. The banana-wrapped chicken tamales are just like those I ordered from a little stand in Merida. They are very tender, flat rather than thick and solid, and come topped with a mild tomato sauce.

Panuchos are small corn tortillas stuffed with black beans and topped with chicken shreds. You also get the requisite Yucatecan pickled red onions, lettuce, tomato and avocado. Pretty though it is, this dish cries out for something like a jolt of habanero chile salsa.

Cochinita pibil is pork seasoned with achiote and lime juice, wrapped in banana leaves and baked. Shreds of it came on salbutes, a daily special that didn’t measure up to the panuchos because it used ordinary tortillas instead of dainty little Yucatecan tortillas and a rather skimpy topping of pork, lettuce, pickled onion and avocado.

Not every special is Yucatecan. One Friday, there was angel-hair pasta with seafood, rather Italian, even to the red bell pepper dice around the rim of the plate. The seafood came in garlic sauce (mojo de ajo) but not so much garlic that I had to cancel that evening’s social engagement. Each Friday brings seafood specials such as that pasta, or fish tacos or a seafood chile relleno. And there are plenty of shellfish dishes on the regular menu.

A waiter from New Mexico suggested that El Portal serve flat enchiladas--and there they are, two tortillas layered with spinach and shrimp, topped with tomatillo sauce, sour cream and cheese. A nice dish. There is also excellent mole sauce, not too sweet and with plenty of punchy chile flavor.

To start, you get a little dish of multicolored tortilla chips and salsa. Some of the Yucatecan dishes come with very good black beans and rice on the side. And to conclude, there is flan, a dense yellow molded custard strongly perfumed with cinnamon and dolled up with splotches of ground cinnamon around the plate.

El Portal has some interesting margaritas, one flavored lightly with amaretto, another with cranberry juice. “La Bamba” combines tequila, Frangelico, banana liqueur and orange juice in a tall glass that sports a Mexican flag along with an orange wedge and cherry. The surprise is, it’s not as noxiously sweet as it sounds.

El Portal is a comfortable place in a brick building at one end of an arcade that runs from Colorado Boulevard to Green Street. A fireplace in the dining room was lighted on an unseasonably cold day and, when the weather goes to the other extreme, there are tables outside.

BE THERE

El Portal Mexican Restaurant, 695 E. Green St., Pasadena. (626) 795-8553. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Monday, 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. All major credit cards. Lot parking. Full bar. Dinner for two, food only, $14 to $26.

What to Get: Chayotes rellenos, when available; panuchos, flat spinach enchilada, mole enchilada, chicken tamale.