We’re not used to finding fashionable Mexican fine dining, at least here in Orange County.
Truthfully, until Tal & #233;o Mexican Grill opened in Irvine’s Park Place, I didn’t even have a vague mental vision of what such a restaurant here might include.
But Tal & #233;o has come along, giving local Mexican cuisine a swift kick in the pants. Our culinary friends are loving this attractive place and its upscale Mexican cuisine served in a room decorated in a modish kind of elegance.
We’d been in fancy Mexican restaurants in central Mexico, where the cuisine was treated in a more artful way and the dishes certainly didn’t resemble in taste or concept what we are used to in the U.S. We’d been treated to table cloth service and chic settings in those places.
Tal & #233;o serves beautifully executed regional dishes and forward-thinking items that fuse the best of Mexico with California touches.
They did a serious remake of a building that used to house a Southwestern-style restaurant. The Tal & #233;o designers stripped the interior down to the four walls and invested in a very stylish mix of real elements.
Overhead the bowed ceiling features hefty polished beams and wood slats while terrazzo floors flow throughout. Real leather is everywhere, including on the wall tiles. A trio of hand-blown glass chandeliers, 100-year-old pine tables and beautifully crafted woodwork, plus a good art collection, fills out the ambiance.
The founder and operations manager of the restaurant is Nic Villareal. He’s a local restaurant veteran, though never before an owner. Villareal picked Jose Acevedo, a chef from Mexico City, to head the kitchen.
Jose already had a finely tuned knowledge of the best regional dishes of Mexico, a passion for the tastes that came from home cooking and he knows about enticing presentations.
Tal & #233;o makes everything fresh. This is not a kitchen where canned and pre-prepped foods are embraced.
The wonderfully crispy chips are made to order for each table. The guacamole also is freshly mixed when ordered. Rice is cooked throughout the day at short intervals. The fresh fish is filleted in-house. Spices are freshly ground. Red mole sauce is made daily from 28 ingredients. Tamales are made by hand.
Speaking of chile rellenos, we’re used to eating them stuffed with cheese and almost always overburdened with a thick batter. Forget that here. These are filled with the chef’s special pork picadillo, golden raisins, toasted almonds and spices. They are crisped in a very thin batter and served in a small dab of tomato broth with nopalitos (cactus pads) and house-seasoned rice on the side.
Tal & #233;o’s menu features a soup that changes every day. They range from creamy versions to chunky potages.
Tortilla, albondigas, creamed squash, lentil, black bean, seafood medley, roasted corn and arroz con pollo (chicken-rice soup with vegetables) are on the soup list.
You should plan on sharing some appetizers since everyone at your table will want to taste them anyway. The queso fundido starts you out right. It’s a mix of melted cheeses with the punchy flavors of mushrooms, roasted poblano chiles and bits of chorizo mingled in.
How about a quesadilla with chicken, beef, pork picadillo or a combination of cheeses? Citrus and serrano chiles make the marinade for the ceviche of halibut, shrimp, scallops and calamari, one of the appetizers that we’ll often share because it says so much about good, raw seafood that gets “cooked” by its acidic component.
If you know poke (raw salmon cubes of Hawaiian cuisine), you will surely fall in love with Tal & #233;o’s tuna tostar. Sushi grade tuna is diced,smaller cubes than for traditional poke,and lightly dressed with a spicy cilantro-soy mixture.
Another intriguing appetizer is the sopes. These are little oblong “boats” made of fresh, soft masa that are filled separately with pork picadillo, beef rib meat and simmered chicken,a nice way to get several tastes on one plate.
There are entrees typically found in the U.S. such as carne asada, carnitas and enchiladas here. But believe me, they bear no resemblance to the generic forms in other Mexican restaurants.
The carnitas are a prime example. This is a recipe from Jose’s mom. He never could appreciate what was being served stateside as carnitas, so he shares this remarkable dish with us.
In Jose’s version, it’s a labor-intensive preparation that finds the meat in a large chunk for you to shred on your plate, a piece of prime pork that has been slowly simmered in his blend of chiles and spices giving way to a tender juiciness robed in a caramelized coating.
Slow-roasted, hand-pulled rib meat is mixed with a mild guajillo sauce for the beef enchiladas. The cilantro lime rice that comes on the side also is superb. This, like many dishes, also comes with very good charro beans or fresh vegetables.
The chicken enchiladas are stuffed with roasted chicken that’s been drenched in that fine 28-ingredient fresh red mole sauce. A yellow mole sauce enhances the spinach and mushroom enchiladas.
Rib-eye steak is used for the beef tacos, along with roasted pepper rajas, a couple of salsas and fresh guacamole. Sweet shrimp take on redolent garlic in the camarones saut & #233;. With a little tomato, white wine and cilantro drifting throughout the sauce, it’s quite the dish.
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone like Nic would hire a resident wine expert, Marc Dix. Marc suggests wines to match your food, things like the Gainey merlot or the Foley pinot noir with your carnitas.
Don’t overlook dessert. There’s the tres leches marvel,white cake soaked in three kinds of milk, condensed milk and cream taking top priority in the rich flavors, yet not overpowering the dessert with sweetness.
And the flan is unique. In order to make this dessert stable for several days, other restaurants over-bake it and the result is something similar to flan, but far too solid. Go south of the border and it’s a luxuriously creamy affair.
Jose makes his flans every day and bakes them only until they reach what I call the “jiggle” stage. Don’t leave the premises without ordering it.
AT A GLANCE
TAL & #201;O MEXICAN RESTAURANT
Address: 3309 Michelson Drive, Park Place, Irvine
Phone: (949) 553-9002
Cost: appetizers and soups, $5-$10; salads and sandwiches, $6-$14; entrees, $9-$21
Open: daily from 11a.m.
