Affixed to the restaurant’s name, Chilango, is the descriptor Mex-Tex — a linguistic sleight of hand that may at first sound like a grift. Tellingly, will diners still think of stale taco shells, lukewarm lettuce and fluorescently colored cheese?
There is no such scheme at Chilango, nor any promise that the food served here is more sainted than that served north of the (southern) border. For the record, Tex-Mex — a term used to describe American Mexican food — is far more nuanced than the culinary accolades of, say, Taco Bell.
While there is a place for Crunch Wrap Supremes (a staple order for this critic), there’s equally a place for food that celebrates this diasporic foodway. And at Chilango, Mexican-born chef Jorge Guzmán has a knack for threading references — masa, vivid salsas and wildly complex moles — into the crevices of staple Tex-Mex.
Consider the Thursday special, the chimichanga ahogada. That the sauce is exemplar — with shades of heat from both guajillo and morita chiles — isn’t enough to warrant Mex before Tex, because great Tex-Mex sauces can be refined, too. But this chimichanga swaps chicken for a meaty pork shoulder, smoked until it takes on a texture not unlike fleshy refried beans. The meat is enveloped by a tortilla wrap whose texture announces that it had been deep-fried, stopping short before it starts to weep of grease. There are striations of the queso fresco, and in place of shredded cheese and that unholy scoop of guac is, refreshingly, a small mound of salsa guajillo.
What Guzmán does here — his keen sense of subverting tradition without undermining it — isn’t dissimilar to what he’s done at the places that built his renown: Surly’s Brewer’s Table, the pop-up Pollo Pollo al Carbon, and Petite León, where his motley culinary ideas started to blend.
His latest, Chilango (named after the slang demonym for Mexico City natives), takes the idea even further. It offers a tonier location, by the shimmering Bde Maka Ska, in a nearly century-old historic building, offering a space fit for large parties: a front dining room with high ceilings, a long bar and booths lining the back wall that flank a back split-level dining room, where diners can have a quieter meal under a pavilion of tropical plants.
The restaurant offers a more expansive menu, delivering retooled Tex-Mex in spades. It also courts spontaneous return visits, thanks to the published daily specials. On Thursday, you may enjoy the chimichanga, as I did, with gusto. Or you may visit the day before, for the serviceable Wednesday carne guisada — a wrap you can make from long-braised, meltingly soft beef, mole, frijoles (beans) and rice.
I’d travel (within reason) for Guzmán’s enchiladas, any day of the week. Two are on the staple menu, and both are stellar: The camote, which resembles a thin wrap flattened by a panini press, is filled with sweet potato foiled by an assertive salsa macha, a type of mole made from dried chiles; the enchiladas verdes is a more familiar-looking analog, the rolled cigar withholding tender chicken, covered in a potent tomatillo sauce.
