One of my daughter’s good friends emigrated with his family from Mexico to Atlanta when he was a little kid. His mom now works as a cook in a popular multi-unit taqueria and tequila bar, and she likes to joke that she spends all day making Mexican food her family would never touch, then comes home to make Mexican food her customers wouldn’t pay for.
Mexican food in America is like that: It plays to the crowd. Every neighborhood gets the kind of Mexican restaurant the locals hanker for — whether it’s fresh salsa or cheesy combo plates, tequila cocktails or margaritas made with bottled mix, shredded barbacoa on soft corn tortillas or taco-seasoned ground beef in crispy shells. Not much of it will taste like a home-cooked meal from Michoacan, but that’s fine. There’s much pleasure to be had in a platter of kitchen-sink nachos and a pitcher of Dos Equis.
For many years the only two games in downtown Decatur were Taqueria del Sol, with its distinctive South-by-Southwest menu of fried chicken tacos and spicy turnip greens, and Raging Burrito, with its football-sized tubes of food. Then came Big Tex Cantina, with a good-times take on Texas roadhouse fare. In recent months several new restaurants have opened, giving Decaturites a surfeit of options for scratching that Mexican itch.
Will they all catch on? That will depend on the locals and whether they find that mixture of value, vibe and craveable comfort food that turns Mexican restaurants into neighborhood fixtures. Here’s an early look at three extremely different new places.
Mar
By far the most ambitious of Decatur’s new crop, this restaurant serves “coastal cuisine” in a pretty renovation of the restaurant space that was long Feast. The old brick storefront got a spanking new whitewash — the better to show off the aqueous palette of blues and greens inside, the distressed wood flooring and the tasteful rusticity of the furniture. It’s all very weekend in Cabo — elegant, clean, Mexican for adults who want to sip cocktaily margaritas and choose from a half dozen variations of ceviche (which gets the alternate and decidedly cooler spelling of “cebiche” on the menu).
On the night we visited, the restaurant was half filled with people trying very hard to like their food, which is weird.
Chef Joey Zelinka — who did great work at Sound Table, creating eclectic small plates to absorb that bar’s good cocktails — offers up an unsure-feeling menu of plates, tacos, ceviches and bistro-style entrees. For a seafood restaurant, there’s surprisingly little emphasis on seasonal market ingredients.
Our meal didn’t get off on the good footing it needed. The margaritas (even the upgraded Texas version made with Grand Marnier) tasted bland and watery, without that funky pucker you look for. Heavy, greasy chips came with an odd smoked tomato salsa. The smoke didn’t have the sweet flavor of smoldering hardwood but rather the acrid taste of burning resin.
Seasoning seemed to be all over the place. The “cebiche mar” (with calamari, snapper, shrimp and tuna) was too warm and the pieces of fish were chewy and had absorbed none of the flavor of its citrus-herb marinade. A salad of endive, hearts of palm and peanuts in a grapefruit-ginger vinaigrette was clever and harmonious, but the puckery grilled shrimp on top tasted like the seafood version of Sour Patch Kids. A $21 plate of scallops a la plancha in a pipian verde sauce had poorly defined flavors — a snooze at first bite.
Things improved when we turned our attention to the tacos, which range in price from $5 to $9. The lobster “joeyz” (for the chef’s name) with corn-cucumber salsa and mornay sauce was kind of squishy fun, and the shrimp taco with beans and avocado was terrific. Get me a better margarita, and I might come back for it.
314 E. Howard Ave., Decatur. 404-373-2725, marcoastal.com. Open for dinner daily.
Hola! Mexican Cantina
Hola! replaced the Decatur Diner — a garishly decorated and universally disliked restaurant that occupied a prominent street corner in the heart of downtown Decatur. Residents had long eyed the sunny, spacious corner patio and wished for semi-decent food to eat there.
Wish granted.
Despite the presence of a few tables and booths inside, Hola! practically spills open to the patio, which brings a new energy to the street. The owners have kept things simple, with concrete flooring, heavy-duty metal tables and chairs covered in all bright colors of a serape. Servers pour forth from the large open kitchen bearing thick wooden boards heaped with good guacamole and baskets of chips.
Owner Mike Brosius founded the Cinco chain of restaurants in the northern suburbs. While Hola! doesn’t yet have the polish of those restaurants, it features a similar menu of tacos, fajitas, salads, shareable appetizers and entrees that establish it as a cut above strip-mall Mex in terms of ambition. Tacos come at least two to the order on a platter with the kind of rice and beans that no one ever eats. You can’t mix and match tacos unless you order a third.
I’ve been a couple of times, and I might go back if the patio beckoned on a sunny day when I was walking by. I didn’t mind a sloppy, overstuffed carnitas taco. A salad with grilled shrimp, orange segments and fried polenta croutons over dull salad greens needed something better than its thin, sweet dressing. But it hit the “not terribly unhealthy nor expensive dinner on a Tuesday night” spot.
The house tortilla soup was an odd business with a pinkish, milky broth. And I’m sorry to report the margaritas taste of mix — something your just-out-of-college self would have ordered if it was offered for $1.99 during happy hour and was the size of a birdbath. My middle-aged self knows to switch to beer.
205 E. Ponce de Leon Ave., Decatur. 404-371-9669. Lunch and dinner daily, breakfast on weekends.
Calle Latina
You order at the counter, grab one of the few tables, listen to salsa music and stare at many paintings of Pete the Cat as you wait for your “Latin street food” to come to the table.
The menu at this colorful little spot couldn’t be more simple. You pick out a filling — say, pulled chicken with green mole and avocado or shredded beef with black beans and plantains — and then decide how you want it wrapped. Your choices include flour and corn tortillas, a Venezuelan corn arepa crisped on the griddle, or a split torta roll.
My daughter snarfed down her pernil (braised pork shoulder) with habanero mango slaw so quickly it was hard to get a bite. But I did, and it offered good, sloppy deliciousness. The pulled chicken was dry, but I loved the arepa. On the other hand, a filling of eggs, chorizo and pepper jack cheese deserved better than its terrible, spongy torta roll. Still, the various components were good enough that I’d figure out a way to make them work for me.
Calle Latina also serves a variety of empanadas, including a tasty one filled with black beans, goat cheese and roasted poblano peppers.
406 Church St., Decatur. 404-378-0020. Lunch and dinner, Tuesday-Saturday.
While none of these restaurants would tempt me away from my allegiance to Taqueria del Sol, they all have something to offer. They just need to pay attention to their customers’ tastes and preferences to transition from interesting newcomers into neighborhood haunts.
And if any of them have Mexican cooks in the kitchen, maybe they should occasionally convince them to prepare a dish or two they’d serve their own families. That would be something to try.
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