Mexican Fare With More Than a Bit of Down-Home Flavor

Every now and then, I roll the dice and follow the recommendations of readers who’ve written to tout their favorite restaurants. This is hardly high-stakes gambling, though, and I’ve yet to be disappointed.

Sometimes you find great food in unlikely locations. A case in point: Maria’s Restaurante Tacuba in the Target Center in Santa Ana.

It’s mostly a carry-out operation--you order at the counter, and the dining area is spartan. (And sorry, no margaritas.)

While there’s nothing much on the menu in the way of exotic regional specialties, the food has a refreshing, home-cooked quality and tastes as if it’s made from recipes that have been handed down for a few generations.

Carne asada, for example, is not exactly an endangered culinary species in these parts, but Tacuba’s grilled beef is the best I’ve had in a long time.

Part of what distinguishes it is the quality of the meat. Rather than the usual (and usually leathery) skirt steak, this is a high grade of flank steak carved into long, ropy strands, grilled to perfection, with just the right amount of char. The meat is pleasingly chewy, but not tough, and packed with flavor.

The carnitas are endowed with similar virtues. These gorgeous hunks of pork are beautifully roasted to give them a sturdy sheath of caramelized crust that gives way to tender, juicy meat within. Biting into them, I had the feeling their preparers had tapped into the ancestral culinary memory of abuelas from time immemorial. Also good is the adobado, cubed pork in a piquant red sauce.

Partly as a prank, I ordered the spiced goat, thinking I’d test the limits of my party’s gastronomic boundaries. Wrong. These tender chunks of mild-tasting goat meat, which swim in a soupy red chile sauce hinting of cloves and thyme, disappeared like crazy. The grilled snapper was overdone and over-salted, but the shrimp tacos, doused with a fiery sauce of creme fraiche and chipotle peppers, were wonderful. All in all, this struck me as simple Mexican home cooking at its best.

Maria’s Restaurante Tacuba is inexpensive. Tacos are $1.75, burritos $4.50 and combination plates $4.20 to $7.50.

Maria’s Restaurante Tacuba, Target Center, 3314 S. Bristol St., Santa Ana, (714) 241-1297. Open 1 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.

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A few days later, I was ready to indulge in the more garish pleasures of Tex-Mex food in all its glorious excess. Bring on the melted cheese and pass the Lipitor, amigos! The Chili Pepper in Orange had been recommended by several transplanted Texans for its Tex-Mex food, which it delivers in fine form, along with a good deal more.

With its cutesy but certainly cheerful decor--whitewashed faux adobe, colorful murals, hanging plants--the Chili Pepper might seem like just another bathtub margarita place, but it’s not. The menu is sprawling and the place does high-volume business, but the kitchen isn’t cooking by the numbers.

I’m thinking particularly of a simple dish announced as “jalapeno soup,” which I’m going to try to re-create in my kitchen.

The waiter told me the recipe is a secret, but my unscientific analysis is that it’s basically potato soup laced with roasted, pureed jalapenos. At any rate, it’s thick and silky, and carries a screaming high note of chile.

On another visit, the soup was a rich pozole heavily dosed with a flavorful but sinus-clearing chile de arbol sauce.

I found one of the best chimichangas I’ve ever tasted here, a husky specimen that delivered all the right guilty pleasures: crunchy shell, gooey cheese topping, savory carne asada filling.

However, the other offerings in this category were uneven. The carnitas are good, but the beef enchiladas and chiles rellenos are humdrum, and the best you can say for the margaritas is that they’re big.

Still, I like the chicken a la diabla, chunks of chicken breast doused with a sharp red chile sauce.

The chicken Jalapa--chunks of chicken again but this time in slightly tangy tomatillo sauce served on a bed of rice--is pure comfort food.

The Chili Pepper also distinguishes itself with a wide selection of fish. On one visit, I had perfectly grilled mahi mahi, tender and flaky, which needed only a squeeze of lemon juice to make it complete. It came with especially good refried black beans, creamy and pleasingly smoky.

On another occasion, I had dry, overdone grilled yellowtail but a lovely dish of shrimp baked in foil along with a red chile sauce that, because it tastes like it’s based in a brown roux, reminds me of a Mexican cousin to shrimp Creole, though it’s not served on rice.

So while the Chili Pepper is a good place to satisfy your yearnings for Tex-Mex food, it’s more than that. This menu roves into inventive and sometimes surprising territory.

The Chili Pepper is inexpensive. Appetizers run $4.55 to $6.95, entrees and combinations $4.95 to $9.95.

The Chili Pepper, 167 S. Main St., Orange, (714) 639-2840. Open 10:30 a.m.- 9 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays.