Monte Alban: a brief tour through Oaxacan cuisine
Having spent four months in the Netherlands, one of the top tastes I craved coming back was Mexican. So one of my friends indulged me and we decided to try Monte Alban in West LA (link to website here).
We chose the restaurant looking at Yelp in my friend's iPhone, since our original destination, a tacqueria, was closed for the night. Since neither of us had been to this restaurant, we ordered quite a few dishes to share.
First up were the Molote (on the left), and Tamal de Mole (on the right). The Molote is a small potato and chorizo stuffed corn tortilla that's then deep fried. With just one bite each, this was a crunchy savory amuse bouche. The Tamal was in a square shape, and filled with chicken. The black mole (a distinguishing feature of Oaxacan cuisine) was on the side. I didn't expect to love the mole since we were warned in advance that it's on the sweet side, and the taste matched my expectations.
Next was an appetizer portion of Consome Ranchero. chicken broth was studded with chicken, rice, tomatoes, cilantro, avocado cubes, onion, jalapeno, and cubes of ranchero cheese. This is also offered in entree size, and I can understand why. This is the sort of soup I would love to have everyday - filling and balanced, with a clean and real tasting chicken broth chock full of stuff.
My friend really wanted to try the Taco de Barbacoa, which the super friendly server also recommended. The Taco was actually a large tortilla rolled up. This really needed the green salsa and lime to liven it up.
We also decided to try the Empanada de Cuitlacoche, not knowing what it was. When I tasted it, I immediately thought "funky." My friend checked cuitlacoche up on the iPhone, and I can't say it was great hearing the wikipedia description read out as I was still eating (cuitlacoche is like a tumor of the corn). What was really interesting to me was the format of the Empanada. Instead of a greasy pastry which I was expecting, it was actually more of a tortilla folded over and baked.
Our server recommended the green mole, Verde de Pollo, over the black one since the Verde was supposed to be more spicy than sweet. I can't say it was spicy, but it was certainly fragrant. Actually the fragrance was like a hint of what you get walking into a Chinese medicine shop. The chicken was amazingly juicy and tender even though it was breast meat. I would definitely get this one again.
To finish off, we had not one but two desserts. First was the Nieves Oaxaquenas, home made sorbet. We chose cactus fruit, burnt milk, and mamey (a tropical fruit). I'm not a big fan of sorbet to begin with; all I can say is that the cactus fruit and mamey tasted fruity, and the burnt milk literally tasted like burnt milk.
We also tried the Nicuatole, flan made with corn. This was really surprising to me, since when I see the word flan I expect creamy. This was actually quite firm, like agar agar.
After 8 courses, I was bursting full. But not so full that we didn't head to Beard Papa for green tea cream puffs later. I'm lucky to have friends who like to eat as much as I do.
