Two new places to get your mariscos fix
Lately, I’ve been eating foods that remind me of summer. As if my repeating lunches of mariscos — fish tacos, scallop tostadas and campechana seca — might coax the sun from behind the perpetual clouds. I don’t remember a June gloom quite this gloomy.
My mariscos kick has brought me to Holbox in Historic South-Central for smoked kanpachi tacos. The restaurant was recently named Restaurant of the Year by our critic Bill Addison. To Mariscos Jalisco for the tacos dorados de camarones. Raul Ortega’s tacos represent everything I love about Los Angeles. And to two new mariscos specialists: the sprawling Loreto in Frogtown and El Muelle 8 in a strip mall in Downey.
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Loreto’s tostada kondo
“We wanted to be an exclusive Mexican-product restaurant,†says executive chef Francisco Moran. “That was our first goal with the menu, to get all the best products from all over Mexico.â€
The restaurant, from the group behind La Cha Cha Chá in the Arts District, succeeds in sourcing about 90% of its ingredients from Mexico, with the remaining 10% from California and Japan.
Availability is always in flux, but if Moran can’t get Mexican uni, he looks to Santa Barbara. Shrimp is from Mazatlán. Tuna is brought in from Isla Guadalupe. The scallops, oysters and yellowtail are all from Baja.
The menu is crowded with seafood in all forms: aguachile, ceviche, tostadas, botanos and zarandeados on platters that consume the table. Order it all, and make sure everyone has their own tostada kondo. It’s the most compelling representation of Moran’s commitment to sourcing. A multi-course meal layered onto a crunchy tortilla the size of an open palm.
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Moran was inspired by a dish of wasabi snow with scallops he made when he worked at Patina restaurant in Los Angeles.
“I thought, ‘How can we turn this into a tostada?’†he says. “I pulled certain pieces from a memory and turned it into a mariscos dish.â€
The scallops are firm but mellow, melting into a bright salad of shaved fennel, green apple and Maui onion. Moreno coats the top of the tortilla in an aioli spiked with wasabi, rice wine vinegar and lime.
A single tongue of brûléed uni sits atop the pile of seafood like a crown.
If bay scallops aren’t available, half moon scallops most likely will be used instead.
It’s a complete dish that’s fresh and bracing, the bites toggling between rich and tart.
It’s also incredibly messy. My party of four attempted to cut the tostada in pieces. Just order your own.
El Muelle 8’s taco gaxiola, taco mar y tierra and campechana seca
El Muelle 8, the Downey outpost of the Culiacán restaurant of the same name, is full of big, bold flavors, fresh seafood and salsas you’ll want to drink. It’s easy to over-order. Difficult to choose: The tuna and shrimp taco? The aguachile quemado? Or the verde tatemado?
My lunchtime companion, writer and photographer Eric Valle, prods our server for the dishes we need to try. She seems just as distraught at having to narrow down the selections. We settle on a couple of tacos each and the campechana seca to share.
The taco Gaxiola is big and cluttered, a tower of seafood and condiments on a thick flour tortilla. At the center is a brick of marinated tuna, seared on each side with the kind of subtlety you expect from the seared tuna course of a tasting menu. Still very much raw and luxurious. On top is a dollop of smooth guacamole, a heap of roughly chopped pico de gallo and a heavy squirt of the restaurant’s “special sauce.†It reminds me of chipotle mayonnaise.
The taco mar y tierra is just as formidable, with a roasted Anaheim chile covered in stretchy cheese. On one side of the chile, a pile of grilled shrimp. On the other, chunks of cabreira, a wonderfully tender cut of tenderloin. The meat, seafood and pepper overlap on a griddled tortilla that’s just starting to crisp but still folds. It’s decorated with a zigzag of what I’m now calling the pink chipotle sauce. You want a lot of this sauce.
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Valle and I let out audible gasps when the campechana seca hits the table. It’s a bounty of raw shrimp, cooked shrimp, octopus, scallops, bass, crab and snail, neatly arranged on the plate under a tangle of raw red onion.
This is where the salsas come in, in squeeze bottles on the table, glass jars or bowls large enough for small orders of soup. The salsa negra is intricate and intense, heavy with the flavors of roasted tomato and chiles. It’s the ideal pairing for the curls of cooked shrimp.
The scallops are huge and fleshy, excellent submerged in the stinging green salsa, tart with lime and a punch of heat.
We sluice the snails, octopus, crab and bass with lime. It all tastes like the ocean. None of it needs the salsa, but we douse it all anyway.
Writer, author and all-around taco expert Bill Esparza says El Muelle 8 serves L.A.’s best new mariscos. I won’t argue with him. And I suggest you bring a group when you visit.
Where to find your favorite new mariscos
Loreto, 1991 Blake Ave., Los Angeles, www.loreto.la
El Muelle 8, 8659 Florence Ave., Downey, (562) 746-0025, www.elmuelle8.com
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