Finding Food South of the Border at Home

The El Torito Grill in Irvine is the tan colored adobe building on Main St. between MacArthur and Von Karman. Park in the structure behind it, as El Torito will validate parking.

The first thing you notice when you enter is the tortilla grill, prominently displayed behind a glass partition. (Hence the name…El Torito Grill.) After checking in for a table, we watched in amazement as the cook made fresh tortillas. The cook took little pre-measured balls of dough and flattened them in an automatic tortilla press. Then he scooped up the flattened dough and put it on a rotating circular tortilla grill. After the tortillas made their way around the rotating grill, he flipped them over for another rotation.

After we were seated, our waitress took our drink orders as we scanned the menu. The menu includes entrees such as fajitas, ribs, shrimp dishes, and other Mexican fusion dishes. I chose the chicken enchiladas while my friends chose the chicken taco salad and carnitas Yucatan.

Our server returned with a container of warm, freshly made flour tortillas and honey butter. These freshly made flour tortillas are the main reason we come to El Torito Grill. When slathered with the honey butter, they make the perfect appetizer. Heck, I’ve often contemplated not ordering anything and just eating the fresh tortillas with honey butter for a complete meal.

When our entees arrived, we had actually finished off two containers of freshly made tortillas. My chicken enchilada entree was very good. It has two roasted chicken enchiladas with creamy chipotle sauce. It’s also served with beans, rice, and really delicious sweet corn cake. My friend’s Carnitas Yucatan is a dish of pork marinated with garlic, achiote, fresh lime and orange juices, and spices, and slow roasted. Topped with citrus-habanero marinated red onions. It’s served with red and black beans, rice, avocado relish, and sweet corn cake. He loved the carnitas sandwiched into the freshly made tortillas. My other friend’s chicken taco salad has mesquite grilled chicken breast, field greens, tomatoes, roasted corn, Hass avocados, jack and cojita cheeses, crispy tortilla strips, and raspberry tamarind vinigarette. He liked the salad, but wasn’t very crazy about the dressing, which he ordered on the side.

We finished off with a deep fried ice cream dessert. The dessert was made of dulce-de-leche ice cream, covered in a crunchy banana-nut, cinnamon, and sugar coating, and served with chocolate sauce and a shot of Patron on the side. The dessert wasn’t overly sweet, but it was good anyways.

Our total bill was $64 including tax. While not exactly authentic Mexican fare, it has good food, and the freshly made tortillas are reason enough to come here.

Taqueria De Anda is a small local chain of Mexican Taco restaurants. They have 7 locations around Santa Ana, Fullerton, Anaheim, Orange, and Placentia. The Santa Ana location is in a brick building off 4th st near the railroad tracks. You know it’s a hardcore taco joint when it’s located in an industrial area next to truck repair shops and a trash recycling facility. Taqueria means taco stand in Spanish. Andar means walk, so I figure Taqueria De Anda means walk-up taco stand?

Taqueria De Anda is a quick service restaurant where you order at the counter, then take your food to a table and bus it yourself afterwards. There was a fairly long lunchtime line leading to the counter. The menuboard is pretty sparse, but sparse along the lines of doing something well and sticking to it instead of muddling up the menu with other items. You can have a taco or burrito and something to drink. Choices of meats include asada (steak,) lengua (beef tongue,) al pastor (BBQ pork,) buche (pork stomach,) cabeza (beef head,) chicken, and carnitas (pork.) When it was finally my turn, I found myself in front of the food preparation area. I ordered asada, al pastor, and lengua tacos.

The cook took out 6 warmed corn tortillas, 2 doubled up for each taco. The cook asked me if I wanted everything, and of course I always do! The cook heaped a spoonful of each meat into its own taco. He then sprinkled on some raw onions, cilantro, and some red sauce on the carne asada and al pastor tacos, and green sauce on the lengua. Once finished, we moved over to the cash register where I ordered a drink. The tacos are all $1.25 each, while the burritos are all $4.25 each. My total was $6.25 for 3 tacos and a large drink. Drink refills, cheese, and beans are extra. The person in line next to me asked if there were flour tortillas for the tacos. Blasphemy! Taqueria De Anda only has corn tortillas for tacos and a large flour tortilla for the burrito, no substitutions.

After I got my tray with my plate of tacos and drink, I headed off to find an empty table. Being a quick service restaurant, there isn’t much of an ambiance, but that’s okay. I plopped down my tray and headed off to the condiment bar to get myself some salsa. The condiment bar has the standard mild, medium, and quite hot red salsas, salsa verde, as well as little key limes, onions, cilantro, and radishes.

Back to my table, I squeezed off a bit of lime on my tacos, topped them with a little smack of salsa verde, and off I went! I tried the lengua (beef tongue) first. I didn’t have any reservations about the nature of the meat, since I had tried it before. The beef tongue taco was quite good with a nice “meaty” flavor, similar to that of rib meat, quite good. The asada is real steak (not ground beef) cooked medium-well and diced. The medium wellness leads to some nice carmelized crusty pieces of beef, absolutely delicious. The al pastor (BBQ pork) is made by stacking pork and onions in alternating layers onto a vertical broiler to cook the onion and meat together, infusing the flavors, by far the best of the three.

Taqueria De Anda makes some of the best and most authentic tacos around! Even though they only serve tacos and burritos, the variety is in the different types of meat. I highly recommend this place.

Yes, Cuban food is south of the border, at least south of the Florida coast anyways. Habana is a Cuban restaurant located at the Lab Anti-Mall in Costa Mesa off Bristol. Habana is an eclectic pre-Castro themed Cuban restaurant, which fits right in with the bohemian atmosphere of the Lab Anti-Mall. Habana is at the rear of the Lab, and parking is very tight during lunch. There’s a large outdoor patio which seats about 20 tables as well as a cavernous indoor dining area.

We waited about 30 minutes to be seated during lunch, we looked around at the bar area and saw a bunch of cigars for sale. Unfortunately none of them were Cuban cigars, illegal here in the US you know… Anyways, I found out they have live Jazz music Friday thru Sunday evenings!

After we were seated at a comfy indoor booth in the rear, we looked around and admired the surroundings. There are rusty round metal candelabras hanging from tall ceilings, faux stucco walls which lead up to a faux balcony with wrought iron railings. Lots of nice rich, dark woodwork, and heavy wooden tables, “trees” of votive candles, reminiscent of old Catholic missions, and lots of light coming from a huge wooden sliding door. The atmosphere is quite bustling, with good positive energy flowing while listening to the music of Cuban favorites such as Ibrahim Ferrer.

We looked over the menu, which has Cuban favorites such as the Cuban sandwiches, pulled pork dishes, paella. I chose the Cuban favorite, the medianoche, my friend chose the pulled pork sandwich. We decided to share an empanada appetizer.

The empanadas are basically little turnovers filled with seasoned meats (in our case, ground beef), folded into dough, and deep fried. They are served on a bed of mango slaw, and drizzled with a cream sauce. The crust was nice and flaky, and the season ground beef was very savory. Unfortunately there were only three, so we had the split the third empanada.

Our main entrees arrived and we dug in. My medianoche Cuban sandwich is the king of Cuban sandwiches. Medianoche means “middle of the night” in Spanish, and these medianoche sandwiches were favorites with the pre-revolution club crowd after a night of hard dancing. The medianoche Cuban sandwich starts with Cuban bread, which resembles a French loaf. The loaf is split in half and some yellow mustard is spread on. Then some nicely roasted pork, glazed ham, Swiss cheese, and thinly-sliced pickles are added in layers. Then the outside of the sandwich is lightly buttered and pressed in a flat press (similar to an Italian panini press, but without the grooves.) The hot press slightly grills the bread and melts the cheese, blending all the flavors together. My medianoche was absolutely wonderful.

My friend’s pulled pork sandwich is traditional Cuban fare of nice, tender, marinated pork, barbecued, then pulled and placed in a sesame bun with grilled onions. My friend loved his sandwich and both the mango slaw and seasoned fries that came with it.

We were quite full and had no room for dessert. Our total bill came out to $24 including tax. While not exactly cheap, it was still a reasonable price. The service wasn't great, some of the staff were inattentive at times, but given the busy lunch hour, that was understandable. While probably not 100% authentic Cuban fare, Habana serves good food, has somewhat decent service, and has a great atmosphere. While there are hundreds of Mexican restaurants around OC, there are only a small handful of Cuban restaurants to mix it up a bit, and I recommend this one.

One of my friends was talking about a restaurant that serves pupusas, those cheesy filled staples of El Salvadoran cuisine. I haven’t pupusas for years! I managed to extract the location from him and proceeded to Birrierías y Pupusería Jalisco without further delay. Birrierías y Pupusería Jalisco is in a strip mall off Grand Avenue just south of the 22 Freeway in Santa Ana.

When I went inside, I was seated right away. As it was in between meal periods, the restaurant was largely empty. I sat myself at a comfy booth and looked around as the waitress brought me a menu. The restaurant has an interesting ambiance, the trim and furniture were a combination of red, green, and white, the colors of the Mexican flag. The bar area was adorned with a large wall mural depicting the beach, probably in somewhere in Jalisco.

The menu was also a mix of Mexican and Salvadoran food, featuring huge burritos, sopes (soups,) tacos, as well as my pupusas. The waitress said the lunch specials were still available, including 3 pupusas for $5. I ordered the pupusa lunch specials with one cheese, one chicken, and one beef pupusa, and a soda.

About ten minutes later, a plate of hot pupusas came out. Pupusas are basically an El Salvadoran specialty made of big thick corn tortillas stuffed with a white cheese called quesillo, and meat. They’re cooked on a flat grill with liberal amounts of oil. The waitress sat a jar of curtido down on the table for me. Curtido is a type of slaw of pickled carrots, cabbage, garlic, and a few peppers. I spooned myself a nice heap of curtido on my pupusas. They were a slight bit greasy, but very good. I could feel the gritty corn exterior and the extremely hot cheese and meat interior with the contrast of the garlicky, pickled curtido. Do beware of the molten cheese, which has been known to scorch more than a few mouths.

My total bill came out to $7 with food and drink. Not bad for a 3 pupusa lunch, although pupusas cost less than a dollar each in El Salvador. But since we’re here in the US, that’s acceptable. Whether you want Mexican, El Salvadoran, or maybe a little bit of both, I’d definitely visit Birrierías y Pupusería Jalisco. There’s also a second location in Santa Ana at the corner of Grand and Main St.

A friend told me about Alberta’s Mexican Food. He said it used to be an old Alberto’s, a great authentic Mexican food chain that dissolved a few years back. I remember making late night runs to Alberto’s while in back in college some 15 years ago. I had to go see if Alberta’s has the same great authentic Mexican food as the Alberto’s chain used to have.

Alberta’s is located on El Camino Real in Tustin, just off Newport Ave, a block north of the 5 Freeway. It’s technically in the Old Towne Tustin area. As we walked up to the restaurant, it’s apparent that it’s basically a walk-up taco stand with a drive-thru window. There’s also an addition that serves as the indoor ordering and dining area. We entered the restaurant and scanned the menu board. Alberta’s has the traditional favorites such as tacos, burritos, quesadillas, combination plates, as well as other items, such as machaca, rolled tacos, and carne asada fries. We stepped up to the counter and I ordered a carne asada chimichanga, while my friend ordered a carnitas burrito platter with beans and rice. With two soft drinks, our total was only about $16. They even have authentic Mexican style drinks such as horchata and tamarindo drinks, as well as the usual ice tea and sodas.

We sat down at one of the booths inside to await our food. There really isn’t much ambiance in the dining area. There’s a little salsa bar with different types of fresh salsa and condiments, homemade pico de gallo such as lemons, diced onions, as well as pickled radishes and carrots. I got a few of the little plastic condiment cups to get myself to some of the milder green salsa.

A few minutes later, the cook called out our number and I picked up our orders, which came on plastic plates and trays. Both my chimichanga and my friend’s carnitas burrito plates were huge. A chimichanga is basically a deep fried burrito, and my old favorites back when I was in college. I dove right into the crispy, deep fried wheat tortilla crust. Except for being scaldingly hot, my chimichaga was very good, with little bits of lettuce, cheese, onions, tomatoes, and nicely grilled carne asada chunks. My friend’s carnitas burrito was smothered in red sauce and melted cheese and served with Spanish rice and beans. She loved her burrito, the carnitas were very tasty and tender as the strands of pork fell apart pretty easily. She couldn’t finish her burrito, I took a few bites of it, but I was stuffed myself. She received a takeout container from the cook and took the remainder of her burrito home.

I think Alberta’s Mexican Food is pretty much the same as I remember the old Alberto’s chain. Not much to look at, but really good authentic Mexican food at inexpensive prices. Far,far better than any chain Mexican restaurant, just like I remembered it to be.