El Quetzal | Beacon Hill

If the sounds of sonidero and the prospect of Pambazos doesn’t get you excited you might be dead on the inside. An expansive bar with an excellent tequila section, large menu of very different plates, and super friendly service.

The verdict? GO.

Unlike in my previous post which was just a delightful discovery of some excellent carnitas this takes a look at some genuinely fascinating dishes. Normally a menu as large as Quetzal’s scares me. In the restaurant world the more things on the menu often translates to a larger material inventory which means more cost and the possibility of more things perishing before you serve them which means lost money. However, Quetzal seems to pull this off with great quality ingredients and some really fun things on the menu.

Nopales, aka cactus, isn’t anything new to Mexican cuisine. In fact, nopal has been a major part of Mexican cooking especially in the predominantly vegetarian days prior to European imperialists bringing livestock. I’m not a huge fan of cactus but that’s probably because it’s incredibly easy to cook into a slimey product that lacks both flavor and texture. Quetzal showcases this ingredient and puts it in a number of menu items from an entire salad of nopal to accompanying dishes like chile verde, huevos con nopales, and huaraches. There’s a few more but you get the idea; I think in general I’ve seen restaurants have one, maybe two, dishes with nopal so I feel like this speaks a lot to what they’re representing in the menu.

Pambazos. If you like tortas and have never had a pambazo then you need to cancel all food plans immediately and seek one out (here, if you can). The signature component of the pambazo is the bread should/is usually/technically/generally speaking different a little than a torta having less of a crust although I’ve seen restaurants use the same bread for the pambazo and torta. Honestly I don’t think it matters because the amazement comes from the bread being drenched in a guajillo pepper sauce turning it red and then seared both sides on the griddle which gives back some structure to prevent it from being a quickly decaying wet mass of bread. Internet authorities note the origin being a sort of potato taco transplant into marinated bread form but a lot of places I’ve seen in both CDMX and LA have a choice of meats and the typical fill of cream, lettuce, and tomatoes similar to a torta. At Quetzal they seem to bridge both styles with a Portales (chorizo & potato), Loco (ground beef, potatoes, carrots, peas), and A La Chimichurris (shredded chicken and onions cooked in a chipotle sauce). I vote A La Chimichurris because chicken and mole with the lettuce and sour cream and the pepper sauce in the bread… yes.

Other things of note!

Sincronizadas. Ever made a quesadilla with two tortillas? You basically/technically made a sincronizada without the topping. This was news to me after seeing this on the menu and then reading that technically quesadillas are one large tortilla folded over and sincronizadas are two smaller tortillas one over the other and often topped with something.

CDMX throwbacks: Gordita Tepito, which are masa dough pockets usually stuffed with a cheese and a meat -in this case pork cracklings, lettuce, onion, cheese, and sauce -not that trash Taco Bell calls a gordita. Enchiladas Picudas, which I don’t think is actually a defined recipe but more a dish to celebrate the Trival dudes who dance with those dope pointed boots, and in cases where I’ve seen it dance to electronic cumbia music. Is this their dish? Literally no one knows but it’s chicken enchiladas in a cactus sauce topped with cotija, onions, cilantro, and oregano.

Now we turn to one of Mexico’s most amazing dishes, something I’d put up there with Coq au Vin or Ramen: Pozole.

Whether you’re having a late night, late morning, early dinner, honestly it doesn’t matter, pozole can rid all things of wrong doing, get you set for the day (or recover from the one before), and is all out a fantastic dish. On my first visit to Quetzal I was prepared to crush a pambazo, or the green enchiladas -it was going to be an audible, until I was seated at the bar and told the specials of which the last one on the list was pozole. Case closed.

The pozole here was excellent. Greeted with a bright but murky bowl of solid red and a giant chunk of pork shoulder looming in the middle like the iceberg that sank the titanic. And yes, what lied below was even more meat in addition to the chunks throughout the bowl. Just the right amount of hominy but… no tortillas, shredded cabbage, and radishes -what happened? Instead, an array of garnishes I’d never been served: small tostadas, a lettuce salad, limes (not new), but then three individual service cups of mayo which might have been crema (it was thicker than crema but didn’t taste exactly like mayo), diced onions, and a ground spice mix that wasn’t tahin.

What do I do? It’s like I completely forgot how to eat. And now I notice the four construction dudes having an end of shift michelada meeting were laughing more. Were they laughing because I looked suddenly clueless at the plate I ordered? Man this barstool is like a mile from the counter.

Life found a way. I’m used to the pozole my wife makes, which is similar to what her mom makes, which it turns out, unsurprisingly, is a Jalisco or Guadalajara style pozole almost identical in pork and broth preparation but with different condiments. Jalisco style it seems almost always has radishes and cabbage and may also contain cilantro. Thanks to the Internet I discovered it’s identified as a CDMX style to serve pozole with small tostadas, lettuce, mayo, and chili piquin. Boom! The powered stuff was chili piquin! I knew I’d had it but was never going to recall the name.

Long story longer according to more Internet authorities it’s common to take a tostada, place some mayo or whatever on it, with possibly lettuce, eat some of the pozole, then take a bite of the tostada. I didn’t do this since I’m used to tearing up tortillas and topping them with everything plus some of the pork and pozole broth so that’s what I ended up doing but in tostada form with lettuce, mayo, and onions. The result? Outstanding. Seems like there can be a lot of right answers for how to eat pozole and that was one of them.