Restraint of Taste

Really spicy food is a good companion for beer, and at the moment Terraza Azteca lacks a beer and wine license. Mexican grapefruit soda, tasty though it is, is not a satisfying substitute. This may be why this new Studio City place, a narrow blue and mustard room decorated with posters of works by the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera, seems to be holding back on the chiles.

But the theme of the place, regional Mexican cooking, has real potential. You get a basket of fresh, hot tortilla chips and two delicious salsas, one made from tomatillos, the other from chile de arbol. There’s a delightful appetizer called huaraches: a pair of fat homemade tortillas with a simple stuffing of beans, salsa, cheese and onions.

The kitchen also shines when you order a taco filled with cochinita pibil, the Yucatan-style roast pork flavored with annatto and cooked in a fire pit. This is tender, juicy pork, perfumed with exotic flavors. Chicharron is authentic but of more limited appeal: pork cracklings served as an entree with hot sauce.

Caldo de res is a homey beef soup full of stewed meat and rather unwieldy chunks of vegetables. This one could use a more intense broth. Chiles Veracruzanos are one of this menu’s more unusual items. They’re jalapeno peppers stuffed with tuna, tomatoes, onions and garlic; somehow, the effect is almost Italian.

This restaurant is one of the only places in the Valley serving pipian, the sauce thickened with ground pumpkin seeds. Here, the boiled chicken it blankets is rather flavorless, and the sauce itself could use more zip. The mole sauce, made with chocolate and several spices, fares a little better. It, too, comes on boiled chicken, which doesn’t do much to bring out the sauce’s complexity.

You can tell much about the quality of a Mexican kitchen just by tasting the rice and beans. Here, the beans are quite good, but the rice tastes as if prepared hastily. It clearly hasn’t absorbed much flavor from the chicken stock it was cooked in.

And I wouldn’t come here if I were in a hurry, either. Someone in the kitchen will come out to take your order, and then go back inside to prepare it.

But a few excellent weekend specials make up for these missteps. Terraza Azteca makes a rich hominy and pork soup (pozole) with an intensely flavorful broth. Chileatole Veracruzano, a spicy soup laced with chicken, potatoes and rice, is another must.

If the restaurant decides to cook this well all week long, it should be around for quite a while.

BE THERE

Terraza Azteca, 11040 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Lunch and dinner from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. Parking in lot. No alcohol. MasterCard and Visa. Dinner for two, $17-$26. Suggested dishes: huaraches, $3.50; taco cochinita pibil, $1.50; pollo con mole, $7.50; pozole, $5.75. Call (818) 760-2571.