Sol de Mexico - Holey Molé

A big thanks to MHL for arranging last night's dinner at Sol de Mexico. The restaurant was really on last night. I think it was one of the best meals I have had there yet! Of course, as always the company of fellow LTHers made the evening even better. Although SdM was packed to the gills, service was not an issue. MHL's idea of having the meal served family style was brilliant and is the only way to go when dining there with a large group IMO.

Yes, it was an excellent dinner outing, and for those of us for whom it was a first visit to Sol de Mexico, it was a good opportunity for a sampling of the tasting menu of the tapas portion of the menu. "Family style" was the perefect way to be served. I thought the food was very good quality, it arrived at the table hot and the was service attentive, given the large group and the fact that all other tables were occupied.

As good as the food/service quality was, the interaction/camaraderie of LTHers was what, for me, made the outing special. It was an impressive collection of food-savvy folks, indeed.

Thanks for letting me tag along!

Since the night was Mexico-themed, I'll take this opportunity to provide a link to approx. 2,500 photos I've taken and uploaded to online albums:

http://community.webshots.com/user/billmasterson-reg

Bill,

Thanks for posting the link to your photos (I especially like the Day of the Dead shots -- many so surreal; laughed at the tableau of the skull guy, Virgin of Guadaloupe and pack of Marlboro).

Appreciated the excellent tequila as well,

Hammond

LTH,

A good time was had by all last evening at Sol de Mexico, especially by my wife Ellen and I. The place was humming, service seamless, especially in light of the crowd, food terrific, as Steve said, maybe the best in 4 outings, and the company of LTHers was grand.

LTHers at Sol de Mexico



Cochinita Pibil was dead-on last evening, perfectly complimented by citrus habanero sauce.


Carolyn w/Sopesitos


No, really, we didn't drink all that much.


Well staffed kitchen.


I discovered the real brains behind the operation.


Thanks Matt, a great evening, nice to see old friends and meet new friends.

A few additional pictures may be found here.

Enjoy,
Gary

Kudos, mhl! Sign me up for the next dinner at Sol de Mexico.

It's a nice feeling to have helped facilitate a good time for so many on Saturday. Really, most anyone can work some magic when provided with:

- a venue with quality products;
- an owner/manager/chef with passion and love for his art, as well as respect for his customers;
- an assemblege of sensitive, friendly, and articulate participants who know how to enjoy themselves and appreciate a good thing when they see, smell, taste...experience it;
- a smidgeon of history-based perspective to craft a dinner's group size and starting time.

With quality materials & people, good attitude, and opportunity, all we needed was to arrange timely proximity, and Convivial Critical Mass occurred. Perhaps you can see in G Wiv's second photo--where I'm mooning him in my own special way--that I was aglow at how nicely our dinner unfolded. Of course, that glow also was partly fueled by petit pois' peach lambic, Cynthia's Argentinean sparkling cider, and Bill's tequila. So, yes, overall I was pretty well-lit.

They tell me the food was decent, too. No, seriously, Carlos and his staff delivered a series of complex, satisfying, and complementary flavor juxtapositions, with admirable execution in a full house. (Plus, he deserves credit for not serving what didn't seem to be "right" for us at the time, e.g., the other mole's or the pasilla-sauced short ribs.)

This SdM dinner's success builds opportunity for more good dinners. I'd be pleased to find out what's in Carlos' new menu (coming in September, I think.) Maybe there'll be something with that guava mole' Hammond and I have been looking forward to. He's also been talking about sets of specials progressively highlighting all 32 of Mexico's states.

Finally, I want to encourage other folks to jump in and help put together another small dinner--at SdM or elsewhere. I'm continually impressed by the depth of LTH members, both old-timers like eatchicago and stevez and brand-new faces like Tasty, whose membership is only days-old. We've got a lot to share.

--Matt

G Wiv wrote:A few additional pictures may be found here.

What is this dish with the masa steamed in banana leaves? It resembles tamales nejos, but I have never seen them served liked that. Is that pork on top? Is that a filling that is steamed with the tamal or is it added later? Anyhow, it looks amazing.

Those are corundas michoacanas, and they are topped with a sauce/stew of pork. It is masa processed with ash rather than cal, and steamed "blind." The sauce is not cooked with them, but added after the corundas have been steamed and opened.

While the ribs with pasilla sauce might not have been right for your group on Saturday, I had a taste of the sauce on Thursday and it was delicious.

I'd like to add to the chorus of praise and thanks for an excellent evening. Special thanks to mhl for the idea, the planning, and the quarterbacking of a smooth event. Extra special thanks to Carlos and his crew for an excellent meal that didn't miss a beat.

The culinary highlight for me was the beginning of the meal: Simple bowls of mole negro and verde served with a parade of piping hot, fresh tortillas. I could make a meal of a bowl of mole negro and a stack of tortillas (and I almost did).

As usual it was a pleasure to dine with LTHers old and new. The interest and enthusiasm of LTH forum newcomers combined with the ongoing appetites of board veterans always makes these events fun and interesting.

My photos don't have much to add to Gary's, so I'll just provide an external link to the whole set that made the cut.

Best,
Michael

annieb wrote:Those are corundas michoacanas, and they are topped with a sauce/stew of pork. It is masa processed with ash rather than cal, and steamed "blind." The sauce is not cooked with them, but added after the corundas have been steamed and opened.

As I've mentioned a couple of times, I've had corundas at taq. chorrito on clark and devon, there they came with lengua en salsa verde.

I just wanted to thank everyone for a splendid time Satuday night. Carole and I enjoyed meeting everyone and having a great dinner. I haven't had mole like that since Oaxaca last year. The mole negro would have been good on almost anything.
It was fun to put faces to LTH handles. I look forward to the next event.

Jim (from Schuyler county) & Carole.

I have a question for those who attended the SdM event and/or people who've been there a few times.

Our only experience (last Friday afternoon) was very good in terms of the moles, the lamb and the tortillas. However, we found both the chicken and pork meat to be dry and excessively white meat. The chicken in the sopacitos was all breast meat, which is not my fav, especially in a dish like that.
Also, the pork meat in both the Manchamanteles mole and in the tamales were dense chunks of very white pork that tasted like overcooked loin chop or something. Although, I know pork shoulder has a mixture of light and dark portions, and maybe we just got an unlucky spoonful.

Did you or have you experienced more dark meat in these pork and chicken dishes?

Thanks.

griffin, i've found the pork dry on several visits in the dish with corundas. i dont order it anymore. but the pork in the cochinita pibil has been fantastically moist on several visits. i had lamb this past saturday night (not part of the lth group) and it was distressingly dry. hard to figure since presumably it has been braised in the fabulous mole. on other visits the lamb was great. i'm underwhelmed by white meat chicken at the best of times so the only chicken i've had at sol de mexico was in the sopecitos. one visit it was dry, another it was moist but a little stringy. restaurants, i think, offer white meat too often, because it's so much easier than dealiing with thighs (my favorite part), not, IMO, because it tastes better. justjoan

griffin wrote:I have a question for those who attended the SdM event and/or people who've been there a few times.

Our only experience (last Friday afternoon) was very good in terms of the moles, the lamb and the tortillas. However, we found both the chicken and pork meat to be dry and excessively white meat. The chicken in the sopacitos was all breast meat, which is not my fav, especially in a dish like that.
Also, the pork meat in both the Manchamanteles mole and in the tamales were dense chunks of very white pork that tasted like overcooked loin chop or something. Although, I know pork shoulder has a mixture of light and dark portions, and maybe we just got an unlucky spoonful.

Did you or have you experienced more dark meat in these pork and chicken dishes?

Thanks.

This has been my only complaint about SdM so far (as I discussed upthread). Once I asked for some carne asada or other pork in the sopacitos instead of chicken and they were unable to oblige. They served up some carne asada instead, but I found the mix of the mole negro and the strong tasting beef to be a little discordant.

justjoan wrote:

"presumably it has been braised in the fabulous mole"

The meats are not braised in the mole, rather they are cooked in a broth and the broth is used in the making of the sauce. The meat is simply heated through in the mole.

I have always found leaner cuts of pork difficult to cook in liquid. This has only gotten more difficult over the years, as pork is so much leaner than it used to be. When I make a dish like feijoada, for instance, which calls for fresh pork as a component, I will roast the pork and then add to the beans. That, of course, does not give you any broth to add to a sauce.

White meat chicken is also hard to keep moist, requiring a very gentle heat and a keen eye to keep it from overcooking. I, too, prefer the thigh, but recognize that for current taste in dining and restaurant preps it may not be the optimum. Thighs are much harder to clean for a dish needing pieces of boneless cooked chicken. I often use turkey thighs, as their size makes cleaning them more worthwhile in terms of yield, and I love their flavor. But, that's just my taste. A sandwich made with properly poached chicken breast and good mayonnaise is a fine thing, indeed.

Thanks all for that feedback on your chicken experiences at SdM.
It's sad but useful to know that they only seem to use white meat. I'll have to avoid their chicken dishes in the future, since I find breast hardly worth eating unless its roasted perfectly.

It's odd to me, because with SdM's dishes they could cook thigh meat any old way without much fear of overcooking and drying out until it falls apart off the bone for easy prep. It's not like they use neat slices of breast for presentation, they shred it up anyway.
Breast meat has somehow gotten the false rep of a higher class, higher quality cut. I wonder if SdM is sticking to white meat because they think its more compatible with "classed-up" mexican.

Maybe if enough of us mention a preference for dark meat, he'll change his tune.

I went there with a date tonight tonight. We had the guacamole, Cochinita pibil, flautas, and Oaxacan tamales. It was good and the atmosphere was very nice. Only a couple little quibbles and maybe my expectations were set a bit high.

The guacamole was good but needed a bit of salt, no foul there.

The cochinita pibil was tasty but there was an inordinate amount of gristle, bone and connective tissue in our dish. Now don't get me wrong, I love gnawing on lamb bones in curry at Ghareeb Nawaz as much as the next big guy but I wasn't expecting this in that setting. The citrus habanero sauce was fantastic!

Flautas, were flauty. A fine example of the genre.

The Oaxacan tamales were very nice with good flavour and great presentation. My date liked them a lot and is looking forward to trying them at Maxwell Street with me in the future.

I will absolutely be going back, as I told Carlos at the end of the meal. I do think I am going to stick to the mole's from now on. The tilapia at the next table looked amazing, I was so jealous!

Octarine wrote: The tilapia at the next table looked amazing, I was so jealous!

We went on saturday and had many of the dishes that have been highlighted here. By far my favortie dish of the night was the tialpia filet in green mole - this was an outstanding sauce (even if I am not a great fan of tilapia) , next favorite was also surpring to me - the shrimp diabla - I usually find this prep to be one dimensional but what we had was not (and also retained some devilish heat)

one question - as discussion on this thread has morphed from event planning to discussion of the restaurant in general - should it be somehow combined with the existing thread on the eating out board?

There isn't a better mole.

I loved the way every bite went thru a series of sensations. First a touch sweet then earthy chocolate and finishing with the heat.

Stopped there after the picnic (we were planning to take home leftovers) to try the Cochinita Pibil and of course the Mole (over chicken enchiladas). The homemade tortillas were great too.

We loved the decor and the service was good as they were not too busy at 5:00 pm.

This was the first time I have tried Cochinita Pibil and was curious if it always has as strong of a citrus flavor? Thanks to Mike for the heads up.

i had a disappointing cochinita pibil last week, matching octarine's description in his last post. i've loved this dish on many occasions. but this time eatiing it was an unpleasant adventure. i bit and chewed carefully to avoid lots of gristle, a few small bones and some hard bits of banana leaf(i think). it was also dry and stringy. not a fun dish. i was there wednesday about 8pm and there were only 2 other tables occupied. carlos was his usual charming self, but i noticed, not for the first time, a very unpleasant odor that smelled like sewage. justjoan

Stopped for dinner last night on the way home from work. Restaurant was empty when we arrived (about 6:30) but full when we left. The menu has changed somewhat, less tapas (about 10, and missing my favorite calabacitas con crema) and more full dinners, but I'm guessing Carlos would accomodate requests for a larger tasting menu if asked in advance.

Sopecitos as always were delicious, I thought the mole a bit spicier than in the past. Gorditas with Sonoran chilorio were outstanding--we could not resist trying them and were very hungry, so we did.

Then cochinita pibil for me--very, very good, some rib bones but meltingly tender. Himself had a pork chop in manchamanteles. There was no tablecloth, but he stained both his pants and his shirt:-)

I was tempted to try the dry pack scallops in pipian (or green mole) but as Himself is deadly allergic to bivalves and we do like to trade bites, I refrained.

I asked about business, had it held up after the surge following publicity--Carlos said it had, and while he has an occasional slow night, overall he is very pleased.

annieb wrote:I asked about business, had it held up after the surge following publicity--Carlos said it had, and while he has an occasional slow night, overall he is very pleased.

annieb, thanks for the positive update. I was a little worried reading justjoan's downbeat assessment, but my guess is that though business has died down, Carlos is probably doing better now than he would have done without the early summer PR (at least, I like to think so).

Hammond

LTH,

Sol de Mexico seems to be improving each time I visit, not that it wasn't damn good right from the get-go, but tonight's dinner was spot-on. Sopa Azteca is such a kick-ass version of, what's commonly called, tortilla soup the myriads of trough-food factories serving the ersatz version should blush with shame, and the lovely little masa boats, Sopecitos, were delicious.

SdM's menu has changed, more emphasis on main courses, slightly less on small plates and appetizers, also, with increased traffic, Sdm has the ability to carry more upscale perishable ingredients such as rack of lamb and dry pack scallops. Taking advantage of this, I had rack of lamb in mole negro, perfectly rare chops paring beautifully with lightly bitter black mole.

We also tried a dry-pack scallop in pumpkin seed mole. The scallops were perfectly cooked, with the lightest of resistance in the center. A real sleeper dish is Carne Asada, normally simply grilled meat, SdM's version, at leas this evening, was off the charts. Nicely charred, very tender, skirt steak served in a roasted tomato, chile de arbol and garlic salsa. Lovely burst of 'grill' flavor up front, lingering roasted salsa notes at the finish.

Carlos said the menu is due to change again in two weeks, he will be adding duck breast* w/red mole and, possibly, ostrich w/mole negro.

We introduced our neighbors to SdM tonight, they were quite enthused, to the point of taking 5-6 business cards so they could give them to people they chat about food with on the train and office.

Enjoy,
Gary

*Take note Steve Z

G Wiv wrote:A real sleeper dish is Carne Asada, normally simply grilled meat, SdM's version, at leas this evening, was off the charts. Nicely charred, very tender, skirt steak served in a roasted tomato, chile de arbol and garlic salsa. Lovely burst of 'grill' flavor up front, lingering roasted salsa notes at the finish.

GWiv,

I hardly ever order carne asada (seems too easy, somehow), but lately I've thought I should pay it more attention. The combo of steak and guacomole (also something I hardly ever order) is superbly complementary, though it sounds like that was not part of Carlos' presentation.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:I hardly ever order carne asada (seems too easy, somehow), but lately I've thought I should pay it more attention.

Hammond,

No guacamole on the SdM version. Thin strips of freshly grilled skirt steak served in a shallow bowl bathed in a warm roasted tomato, chile de arbol and garlic salsa. Quite scrumptious.

Far as carne asada, I rarely order carne asada in a restaurant setting and, fact of the matter, at Sdm it was my neighbor Dan's order.

I've found Taquerias of the minimalist school, Carniceria Leon or La Pasadita (East side only) for example, where they serve quickly cooked, lightly charred steak on two tortillas with chopped onion/cilantro and a wedge of lime, give the best carne asada bang for the buck.

Enjoy,
Gary

Carniceria Leon
1402 N Ashland Ave
Chicago, IL 60622
773-772-9804

La Pasadita Restaurant
1141 N Ashland Ave
773-278-0384
Chicago, IL 60622

Hammond wrote:The combo of steak and guacomole (also something I hardly ever order) is superbly complementary, though it sounds like that was not part of Carlos' presentation.

It was not carne asada, per se, but a grilled ribeye that I had at SdM, last weekend. The accompanying guacamole and black beans were--as you wrote--an excellent complement for the medium-rare beef under its manchamanteles covering.

On my plate, the cool guacamole and fried scallop of tortilla shell holding the beans were protected from a flood of mole by an archipelago-levee of sliced sweet plantain islands, topped with a queso dusting that visually contrasted strikingly with the dark mole.

So yes, Carlos can indeed give you the sort of combination you're looking for...unless I get to it first.

--Matt

For those of you who might be afraid that Sol de Mexico is too mobbed to be a viable choice for Saturday night, fear not! Perhaps it was just the post-New Year's lull, but this past Saturday night at 7 PM there were several tables open when my daughter and I arrived for dinner. The service was most attentive, (with more tortillas and water provided as needed, but before we asked) in spite of a large birthday party that occupied most of the room. The timing of the courses was in no way derailed by the large party. And the food was as good as I remembered. I would recommend the marlin ceviche tostaditas-- fresh, lemony, and perfectly balanced with tomato, avocado, onion, and cilantro. My daughter ordered the duck breast, rare, and it came rare with perfectly crisp skin and a delicious dark mole of pasilla chiles. I had the cochinita pibil, (which I can't NOT order). The habanero sauce that came with it seemed to have a hint of lemongrass and a heat that built slowly but surely.

Those of you who know me will perhaps be surprised that I hate to admit eating dessert after such an indulgent meal, but I can't keep this to myself. It would simply be wrong. In fact, I am ready to bet that the pineapple upside down cake will surely rank as one of the ten best things eaten by me in 2007. Eating such a dessert is always bittersweet for me, because, in spite of my aspirations to amateur pastry-chefdom, I know I cannot replicate this dessert. This is partially because I cannot fully decode it. It seemed to have a spice in it-- but which one? Is there another bark-- perhaps a variant of cinnamon-- that tastes of orange? The pineapple was marinated in tequila, perhaps, then layered on top of pecans that emerged caramelized from the oven. The cake itself was almost as moist as a sticky toffee pudding and served with vanilla ice cream. 10 out of 10. Save room for dessert!

Josephine wrote:For those of you who might be afraid that Sol de Mexico is too mobbed to be a viable choice for Saturday night, fear not! Perhaps it was just the post-New Year's lull, but this past Saturday night at 7 PM there were several tables open when my daughter and I arrived for dinner.

This matches my experience from a Saturday evening last September.

Josephine wrote:In fact, I am ready to bet that the pineapple upside down cake will surely rank as one of the ten best things eaten by me in 2007. ... 10 out of 10. Save room for dessert!

Whoa. I've gotta get back there. I love pineapple, and especially pineapple upside down cake, and I can only guess for tequila marinated pineapple...!

Josephine,
I was also at Sol de Mexico on saturday, although much earlier than you. A friend and I were on a recon mission to the new location of Supermercado Morelia just down the street. For most of the time we were there, we were the only table. The only complaint I have is that they must have mopped the place with that nasty smelling Mexican disinfectant just before we arrived. Still, ithe meal was wonderful. The disinfectant smell was eventually replaced with more pleasant odors from the kitchen (maybe that pineapple cake baking?). All I can say is that if I am ever reincarnated as a lamb, I hope to end my existence with my ribs floating in a plate of Carlos' Mole Negro.

dave

Josephine wrote:Is there another bark-- perhaps a variant of cinnamon-- that tastes of orange?

Maybe Carlos uses true cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) or Saigon cinnamon (Cinnamomum loureiroi) rather than the powdered cassia (Cinnamomum aromaticum) that is sold as cinnamon in stores 98% of the time. True cinnamon has more subtle taste with some fruity notes. It tastes a bit like what you are describing.