El Pelón Taquería

Conjuring Mexico in the Fenway, for $5 a visit

by Stephen Heuser

DINING OUT

El Pelón Taquería 92 Peterborough Street (West Fenway), Boston (617) 262-9090 Open Tues-Sun, 11:30 a.m. - 10:30 p.m. No bar Cash only Sidewalk-level access Smoking at outside picnic tables only

The most important restaurant to open in Boston so far in 1999 has four chairs, three stools, and no table service. Every item of food is served in either styrofoam or foil. There are weird little Day of the Dead skeleton figurines on the wall.

There is a drink made from rice.

El Pelón is the kind of Mexican place that makes you forget about all those times you waited in line at some trendy Tex-Mex bar to spend $13 on a sham enchilada that smothered its inadequacies in cheese and canned jalapeños. If it succeeds, El Pelón will also put to rest the stubborn idea that a good new restaurant can't do business in Boston without charging New York prices. The menu here is strictly a $1.50-to-$5.25 affair, but there's stuff on it that would represent a genuine improvement for some of the $17-a-plate bistros I've reviewed lately.

I mean, yes, El Pelón is a burrito joint. But it's a burrito joint with ambition. It's also got to be the most anticipated burrito joint in history. The California-raised chef, Loretta Huguez, is tight with the cool kids in the Boston restaurant scene. Her last full-time gig was as sous-chef at Tremont 647, and once word spread that she was starting her own taquería, the foodie press (especially those of us who work two blocks from the space she leased) began keeping an eye on her little Peterborough Street storefront. In the end it took six months to open, which works out to roughly one month for every table.

I don't know Loretta Huguez, but the minute I walked into her restaurant I felt as though I knew what she was up to: conjuring the spirit of a streetside Mexican-American taquería, zipped up with just enough '90s pizzazz to let people know they've got something special on their hands. Toward the first end, you've got the lurid Mexican calendars and bullfight posters and plastic silverware and ultracheap prices. (And that rice drink, horchata.) Toward the second, there is the pickled purple cabbage and the "limed onions," which Huguez invented herself, a sharp little variant on traditional pickled onions.

The menu at El Pelón ranges a lot wider than your average burrito shop's, yet only one item on the blackboard costs more than $4.50. Good Mexican food -- the kind with fresh vegetables, grilled meat, roasted-tomato salsa -- is labor intensive, and part of the reason it's cheap here is that the portions are moderate. None of your gut-busting tree-trunk burritos. The quesadilla costs $1.50 and consists of a modest folded-over tortilla filled with cheese and fried on the griddle. Chips are made fresh, by quartering tortillas and frying them till crisp. You get a decent-size paper basket of chips for $2.50; you get only a little cup of salsa, but if you run out the counter staff seems to be very obliging in ladling out more stuff. Want hotter salsa? Hottest salsa? Here you go. Guacamole costs $1.50 for a modest two-ounce cup, but it's pretty much as good a guac as you can get without making it yourself: buttery, and fueled with cilantro, lime, and scallions.

The staples of a good taquería are all in place. Tacos ($2.25 to $3.75) are small, served open on two overlapping soft tortillas. Grilled beef or fish or chicken is laid out with cabbage and some of those limed onions. Enchiladas ($3.25 to $3.50) are similar, only the tortillas are folded over, and they're served with red mole (slightly bitter, laced with sesame seeds) or green mole (a tart tomatillo-based sauce). Burritos ($3.25 to $3.75) are bigger yet, stuffed with meat and rice and beans. The most expensive menu category is "tortas," a sandwich on a toasted roll served, again, with those excellent limed onions. All the tortas cost $4.50.

El Pelón doesn't have a liquor license, so you can't have a margarita party here after work or before a Sox game. The drinks are interesting, though: a self-service machine dispenses six locally made sodas (including a sweetened green-tea drink), and then there's the horchata, which is made by soaking ground rice, cinnamon, and almonds in water. It's then strained and served over ice. It might sound odd, but it goes remarkably well with tart and spicy food.

Every once in a while El Pelón gets ahead of itself. The "tortilla lime soup," for instance, wedges so many vegetables into a styrofoam cup (including a segment of corn on the cob!) that you can't actually eat the soup without using your fingers. And the fish in the fish tacos, at least when I tried them, had been rubbed with a spice mix too heavy on the salt.

There's one other thing I wish they would change: so far, most everything is served in foil takeout trays. In a little place like this, you don't really mind eating with plastic forks (plus, I noticed a week ago that the forks have been upgraded to a nicer plastic). But there's something odd about food served entirely on aluminum: when you walk into the restaurant, it looks as though all the people eating there ordered food to go and just changed their minds. I think El Pelón could safely upgrade to paper plates without seeming too snobby.

Department of election-rigging

Like a lot of high-end restaurants, the East Cambridge bistro Salamander mails out a regular newsletter to customers and the press, mainly to advertise special events and new menu items. But Salamander's latest newsletter has another purpose: to tilt the local Zagat vote.

The Zagat Survey is a curiosity among restaurant guidebooks because it rates restaurants not according to critics' opinions but by plebiscite: thousands of frequent eaters rate any restaurants they want to rate, and the results are compiled into the distinctive tall maroon Zagat paperback. The 1999 guide, compiled last year, lists Salamander as one of Greater Boston's 10 best restaurants (between Ambrosia and L'Espalier) -- and darned if Salamander doesn't intend to stay there. "We need your help!" urges Salamander's spring newsletter, which crossed my desk last week. "Be a part of the next ZAGAT survey."

If this strikes you as slightly contrary to the spirit of a poll-the-masses restaurant guide, you're not alone. The Zagat people have long taken measures to reduce flagrant ballot-stuffing by restaurateurs. But there's not much they can do about get-out-the-vote campaigns such as Salamander's, and they don't seem too concerned: "You can urge people to fill [questionnaires] out," says Curt Gathje, a Zagat editor, "but you can't write what they say. People tend to be brutally honest, believe me."

For his part, Salamander owner Stan Frankenthaler is unapologetic. "To me, it's like this public survey is a vote," he says, "and we're taking an active approach to telling our customers that they can have a vote. I feel fine about it."

Fair enough. But personally, I think a better campaign would be to elevate a tiny but excellent restaurant like El Pelón to the Top 10 company of Olives, Biba, and Aujourd'hui. The tinfoil plates might be off-putting to your parents, but for the money I can't think of a better restaurant in the city. Or, in the spirit of democracy, pick your neighborhood burrito place and get all your friends to vote for it. Whaddya say? Send a SASE to the Zagat Survey, 4 Columbus Circle, New York, New York 10019. The deadline's next month, but if you complete your survey in time, you get a free guidebook next year.

Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser[a]phx.com.

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