LITTLE RESTAURANT DELIVERS FIESTA OF MEXICAN FLAVOR.(Entertainment/Weekend/Spotlight)(Review)

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) July 12, 1996 Byline: Bill St. John El Aztec Grade A- 3960 S. Federal Blvd. 761-3639. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No credit cards. Items from $1 to $5. Non-smoking section. Wheelchair access (not to restrooms). Three visits.

El Azteca. The minus sign is because it doesn’t serve beer.

But this is it. This is the kind of Mexican food people crave but so rarely find: surprise, surprise – food with flavor.

El Azteca isn’t a fancy joint – you must go outdoors to get to the restrooms – and it isn’t a “concept” Mexican restaurant with a dining room that looks like a set for Zorro.

It’s what El Azteca isn’t that makes it what it is: a little place that serves food cooked with care, style and gobs of taste.

Owner Sergio Hernandez is the reason it works. He comes from Mexico City and spent part of his childhood in Guadalajara. In both places, he learned to cook from his mother and grandmother. And that’s what’s at his El Azteca: home-cooked food, real food.

In Mexico City, he learned the cooking of Mexico’s center: rotisserie meats, carnitas and carne asada, barbecue and rice and beans. From Guadalajara, the cooking of the North: sandwiches called tortas and mild green chile sauces flavored with epazote, a wild herb that tastes like dried coriander leaf.

For his rotisserie, Hernandez takes whole chickens, marinates them in fruit juices, then rubs them with paprika, chile powders and “other spices” (he wisely won’t say which), then roasts them in a small rotisserie until the meat feathers off the bones. For $7.89, you won’t find a more delicious whole roast chicken. this web site carne asada marinade

His carnitas are loins of pork which he starts to roast each morning, in their own juices and little else, for five to six hours. The result is much like Memphis-style “pulled pork” – juicy, lean and rich in flavor.

Try it as the meat stuffing for a torta ($2.69), as delicious a sandwich as could be made. A sandwich in a Mexican restaurant? Actually, very authentic, but we might not know so, taken as we are with (in truth, gringo) foods such as chimichangas.

El Azteca uses a large oval-shaped mini-loaf of slightly sweet bread, baked especially for the restaurant, slices it and browns it on the grill. “The little bit of sugar in the dough makes it crisp real nicely,” says Hernandez. The tortas are filled with the carnitas (or other meats of your choosing) and ripe avocado, sour cream and lettuce. They are, simply, yumbolicious and one heck of a deal for the size they are.

It’s the little touches that make El Azteca as good as it is: the dry rub of chile powders and “other spices” on a tri-tip sirloin roast of beef for the carne asada – it’s amazing to see such a cut of beef for carne asada; the oregano, cilantro and epazote that mark the chile verde; a “norteno” sauce which I’ve never found elsewhere in the U.S. that brings to play Anaheims, chicken broth and tomatoes; and the way Hernandez stuffs meats into the folds of a corn tortilla before frying it hard for his tacos (85CENTS). carneasadamarinadenow.com carne asada marinade

What’s in the masa that makes the tamales ($1) so tasty? Chicken broth, not merely water. And carnitas through the center, not merely ground beef.

Why is the pork al pastor so scrumptious? Because each nugget sports its own rub of chiles, onions, epazote and cilantro.

What’s the secret to the salsa cruda? Roasting the tomatoes before chopping them. And to the salsa verde? Peeling a few dozen tomatillos in addition to the green chiles.

Hernandez even apologizes for using yellow cheese (instead of the more typical queso blanco found in Mexico) to top things such as the burritos. “I tried with white cheese,” he says, “but it just doesn’t look as nice for people. I think they prefer the yellow cheese.” Most folks make chile rellenos ($1.50) from poblano peppers, but Hernandez isn’t happy with the inconsistency in poblanos that he finds at market. So he uses Anaheims, instead, stuffed with jack cheese and perfectly rendered.

His menudo ($3.75, Saturday and Sunday only) is runnier than most, but also more flavorful. It uses only the tenderer part of the tripe, as well.

There’s very little to fault at this little find. Oh, the Mexican-style rice might be overdone and the place is nothing but plain. And I can’t wait until Hernandez gets his beer and wine license. (In the meantime, he serves a tasty horchata, a sweetish, rice-based drink.) But this is It, folks. This is the kind of Mexican food more often read about than found. Go find.