Fonda San Miguel

A new chef, a tradition-bound menu and the real cost of cheap Mexican food

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, September 03, 2009

Cheap Mexican food is not a God-given right.

Mexican places have just as much right to charge $16 for halibut tacos as bistros do to charge $16 for halibut crudo. But our perceptions of what a taco should cost might forever work against high-end Mexican food. We're conditioned by $2 trailer tacos and 89-cent burrito bombs at Taco Bell. We want our mom-and-pop enchilada plates to cost $5.99 and come with rice and beans, plus free chips and sauce and maybe a little guacamole salad. I'm guilty of those misguided value comparisons, too.

I started questioning my value system after a long, expensive dinner at Fonda San Miguel, which opened here in 1975 and dared to serve interior Mexican cooking instead of the city's storied Tex-Mex. Is it fair to compare tenderloin to skirt steak from a price point alone? No. No more than it's fair to criticize handmade pasta for not being as cheap as Spaghetti-Os.

Suffice it to say that you will spend more at Fonda San Miguel than almost any other Mexican place in Austin. But the dishes here deserve to be reviewed for what they are, not just for what they might be somewhere else.

Critics from this paper have reviewed Fonda many times before, and the same dishes have shown up many times: cochinita pibil, duck enchiladas, Veracruz-style broiled fish with tomato sauce, crepes with caramel sauce. After three decades, what more is there to say about a place where the same basic formula still fills up the parking lot, even on a weeknight?

Executive chef Alma Alcocer-Thomas was the reason to go this time. Having left Jeffrey's gracefully earlier this year as that Austin institution looked for a change, she landed the top job at Fonda, another landmark Austin restaurant.

Doing what we could to get a taste of what Alcocer-Thomas is bringing to the table by ordering outside the traditional Fonda canon, we ordered a chile relleno with tuna ($12) and Tamales de San Luis ($8) from the specials menu. We weren't prepared for the room-temperature preparation of the relleno (neither the menu nor the waiter mentioned it). I was disappointed by the chopped tuna filling, which reminded me of canned fish. Even with olives and capers, two Anaheim peppers and a side of heirloom beans, the dish was a washout of soft textures and even softer flavors.

But the tamales were the night's best food, four of them with ancho-tinted masa, melted white cheese and cooked onions and poblano strips. The effect was a clean, subtle flavor, almost creamy and floral, something I didn't want to compromise with the chipotle sauce served on the side.

From the main menu, tenderloin got skirt-steak treatment in the Carne Asada a la Tampiqueña dish ($32.50). There's not much I like better than a tough piece of skirt steak sliced as thin as sandwich bread, full of smoky flavor from the grill. Imagine that steak with the texture of tenderloin, fanned across the center of a plate bordered with guacamole, sautéed poblanos, refried black beans and an enchilada with the earthy sweetness of mole and the creamy tang of white cheese.

The tortilla wrapped around that enchilada was soft and fresh and full of corn aroma, made right there in a full-view kitchen next to the bar. Begging one comparison, I'll call this dish the Platinum Edition of the $7 plate at one of my favorite South Side taquerias.

From the greatest-hits list, cochinita pibil ($20.50) was a packet of cinnamon-scented, tender shreds and chunks of roasted pork wrapped in banana leaf with pickled red onions, rice and beans. The smartest thing Fonda could do is to never, ever change this a bit.

I'll depart from my former colleagues' opinions and call the Fonda decor tacky and carnivalesque. Every square inch of the walls and ceiling is painted or decorated: red faux texture here, ocean-blue walls there, distressed yellow in the foyer, a floral folk-art mural and tiny blue lights in the lounge, a green ceiling in the main room, filigreed beams everywhere. It's a theme-park mélange, almost a Casa Bonita parody of itself.

And why are the Sunday brunch-service tables crammed into the center of the main dining room, with outsized serving pottery scattered on them like a market bazaar, some with Sterno cans still inside? It's like eating in a storage room.

We weren't given a wine list or a drink menu when we sat down. Why not just offer it with the main menu? We had to ask for it after we winged our way through the first drink orders, including a glass of red wine sangria filled with ice-cold fruit ($8). After that, we worked our waiter pretty hard, pulling information out of him on a range of main courses and challenging his timing skills by ordering an extra appetizer just as he brought our roasted cheese with poblanos and chorizo ($12.95, an iron pan of bubbling, salty, filling white cheese, even if the peppers and ground sausage together were an exercise in overkill) and bacon-wrapped shrimp 'Angels on Horseback' ($12.95, a trainwreck of stiff textures and a sour-sea aroma, redeemed in part by a bright escabeche of pickled carrots, beans, cauliflower and potatoes).

A humble dessert of tres leches cake ($6.50) proved a grand finish, a tall, densely crumbed cylinder soaked with just-sweet-enough cream and a crown of fruit preserves, reinforced with a little cup of coffee ($2.50) with cinnamon and Mexican sugar, with a sliver of sugar cane for stirring — a little touch with few rivals at any price.

msutter@statesman.com; 912-5902

Fonda San Miguel

2330 W. North Loop Blvd. 459-4121,

Rating (fine dining):

Hours: 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. 5 to 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays for brunch.

Prices: Starters $9.50 (quesadillas, chile con queso) to $12.50 (tacos al pastor, lamb chops) to $21.50 (a tower of tostadas and sopecitos). Soups and salads $4.75-$7.50). Enchiladas $16.95-$22. Main courses $13.95 (stuffed baked zucchini) to $32.50 (filet mignon with mushrooms), with many options around $20. Desserts $5.50-$9.

Payment: All major cards

Bar: Full cocktail service, including close to 40 tequilas and the margaritas made from them, with daily specials like La Sonora, with cantaloupe, Sauza Silver tequila, Cointreau and agave nectar ($9). The wine list carries about 36 reds, 19 whites and 10 sparklers by the bottle from the $30-$40 range on up to triple-digit splurge bottle, plus about 30 wines by the glass starting at $7. A long list of Mexican beers by the bottle.

Wheelchair access: Yes

: Food, service, atmosphere and value suffer flaws on every level.

: Serious room for improvement, with a few bright spots.

: A good overall experience. Clear mission, solid execution.

: Excellent across the board. Perfect in some areas, with only a few small distractions.

: An extraordinary restaurant experience from start to finish.