La Condesa

Upscale Mexican street food in a nuevo-lunchroom setting

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Wednesday, May 06, 2009

If this whole upscale Mexican street food thing doesn't work out, La Condesa chef René Ortiz could always find work as a barbecue pitmaster. Seriously, his guava-glazed Costillas de Puerco are some of the best barbecued pork ribs in a city full of pedigreed pork ribs: $18 for three generous sections with a sweet, smoky glaze and meat that fell right off the bone, plated with dense, sweet plantains and a little bit of fresh white cheese.

It's disorienting, in a way. La Condesa is like that. It takes our perceptions of traditional Mexican food and tosses them off the glass balcony onto Guadalupe Street below, where Ortiz — a San Antonio native who made his name at New York City's La Esquina restaurant — says he's more comfortable.

"My life is ghetto. That's what I love," he told me by phone just before La Condesa opened in late February, taking its name from a gentrification-friendly hipster district in Mexico City, a district not unlike Austin's own Warehouse and Second Street districts.

Designed by architect Michael Hsu, La Condesa is all glass and textured gray concrete and blond wood veneer on the outside, a sharp-cornered scenester's paradise. Inside, an inchoate soundtrack clashes with a shout-talking clientele, the sound caroming off a blocky central concrete staircase and bare concrete floors. The central dining room is a mix of dark vinyl button-plush booths, splashes of chalky blue and Spartan wood tables complemented with retro-modern molded chairs on spidery stainless legs.

A back-wall mural evokes the multichromatic passion of a torn-paper revolution, making the place feel like the lunchroom of a progressive urban art school. At night, a wiry tangle of bare bulbs creates a dusky twilight that defies easy reading of the font-happy menu.

But it's not without a certain urban romanticism, right down to the couple playing blush-time tonsil hockey on the breezy street balcony, while we waited in the La Condesa bar, a mash of white plastic chairs, low vinyl seats, varnished tree-slice tabletops and a stuffed bull's head to survey it all. From that bar came a $12 glass of crazy-juice called El Cubico, a squat little snifter of tobacco-kissed tequila, grilled pineapple squeezings and vanilla liqueur that tasted exactly like a dry-cured Italian cigar from a spaghetti Western. Cue the Ennio Morricone music.

If the scene feels a little self-conscious, the cooking comes from a man without fear. A salad of jicama and head-on shrimp ($12) shares menu space with a $14 appetizer of mushrooms and corn fungus (huitlacoche) and the chance to order a whole suckling pig. And at night, enjoy the silence of the crickets in the $12 toasted taquitos.

We didn't eat the crickets. Sorry. But on the theory that the simplest dishes can say a lot, we ordered guacamole, a tame blend of creamy and chunky avocado punched up with toasted almonds and a spicy chipotle paste for $6, served with a single-serving bowl of grocery store-caliber tortilla chips, a disappointment in a place so full of housemade surprises — one example being street-style corn on the cob ($3), dusted with Cotija cheese and ancho chile powder.

Another surprise? Barbacoa with an aromatic grilled lamb chop and pull-apart roasted lamb shoulder ($26), served with a salad of tender cactus and greens with a side of grassy and fresh jalapeño-mint sauce and a bowl of sweet, crunchy esquites, a sort of light Mexican creamed corn. And a tart trout ceviche ($14) with tender pieces of raw fish set off by sweet sorbet and grilled lemon showed a welcome lighter touch, though a few bites hid the crunch of something scorching hot that threw the dish off balance.

Balance in general is a delicate thing at La Condesa. The blue-shirted waitstaff works in casual, unhurried tandem with the décor to create an indoor-outdoor bistro feel. But with $14 appetizers, $12 cocktails and dinner for two with a few drinks costing north of $100, that casual air can feel manufactured.

At one lunch, I got equal parts value and flavor with two greasy, tender and salty cochinita pibil tacos on earthy corn tortillas with rice and beans for $10, even if the pickled carrots and green onions on the side had a sweaty taste way beyond sour. But I felt overcharged during another lunch, paying $14 for a small chile relleno with butternut squash and grainy quinoa inside and a pesto-esque pumpkin-seed salsa on top.

But let's be open-eyed about it. At La Condesa, the bill isn't just about food and drinks. It's a cover charge for admission into a downtown hot zone, with the new-money Malverde cocktail lounge on top, Lamberts Downtown Barbecue across the street and the feel of urban hyperstyling — unyieldingly concrete and inevitable — under your feet.

msutter@statesman.com; 912-5902

La Condesa

400-A W. Second St., 499-0300, www.lacondesaaustin.com

Rating (fine dining):

Hours:Lunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays-Fridays. Dinner 5 to 11 p.m. daily. Brunch 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays.

Prices:Starters: crispy huaraches $12 (wild boar chorizo) to $14 (lump crab meat), ceviches $12-$14, nachos $9-$11, taquitos $7 (roasted chicken) to $12 (toasted crickets), tostadas include crab, tuna and octopus ($9-$12). Soups and salads $6-$8. Main courses $16 (chile relleno) to $32 (carne asada entrée). At lunch: $7 (watermelon and Cotija cheese salad) to $10 (rotisserie chicken sandwich with chips and salad) to $16 (carne asada).

Payment:All major cards.

Bar:Full bar service, with wine, beer, specialty mezcals and tequilas and an array of exotic cocktails with fresh juices and housemade syrups, including El Guillermo with fig-infused Jim Beam and the habanero-infused Alma Blanca. The restaurant bar is open daily 3 p.m. to late. An upstairs cocktail lounge called Malverde is open 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursdays-Saturdays.

Wheelchair access:Yes. Chair lift available from the street-level main floor to the raised bar area.