First bite: Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen
Mexican restaurants in Mexico cover the gamut from prehistoric peasant cooking to world class sophistication. Yet despite the vast number of Mexican restaurants in Orange County, they fall into three basic camps: great grubbing at the low end of the scale; old school Gringo Mex smothered in greasy yellow cheese and red sauce; and Nuevo Gringo Mex, the sort of overpriced fare decorated with ancho or cilantro colored crema fresca spooged from a squirt bottle. Very few wade deeper beyond those familiar and overcrowded waters.
Orange County Mexican food lovers deserve to fill some of the missing gaps in that spectrum, and the quietly lauded Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen leads the counterstrike with traditional, yet gussied up Mexican food.
How many places serve the Yucatecan bar snack panuchos, and a delicious version at that? This one’s served with a pickled red onion relish supposedly spiked with habanero peppers that lacked any of that chile’s distinctive flavor or heat. Those cebollas moradas added complexity to the terrific dish, but it forebode a tendency toward too much sweet and not enough heat in the three other antojitos I sampled on this first visit. If there’s a gabacho compromise in the very likable food, this might be it.
Now let me puff up the churro maker’s head a little. Its crisply fried, cinnamon sugared crust yields to an ever-so-slighly loose, custardy center. They’re served with a not-too-sweet, dark chocolate sauce and a crackalicious, sweet-bitter burnt caramel sauce. The menu should simply say: “Sugar coated, deep fried, hot sex dunked in liquid crack.” If you see some destitute addict hanging out at the back door in dessert withdrawls, that would be me.
Orange County craves sophisticated Mexican food without dumbed down flavor profiles, and the CIA trained Gabbi Parker might be our best hope yet. But please, Chef Gabbi, bring on the heat. Bring on the funk!
Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen
141 S. Glassell
Orange, CA
714-633-3038
Gabbi’s occupies an unmarked storefront next an Army Navy store on the east side of Glassell.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Great review as always. I’m glad to hear that the churro guy has now got his groove going.
January 18th, 2007 at 11:40 am
You can tell them to spice anything up. In Gustavo’s review he talked about asking them to make the salsa as spicy as possible . . . and they did, and he liked it.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
elmo and Christian, thanks for your trailblazing on Gabbi’s. I’ll ask for them to spice up the salsa, but it’s still wrong that habaneros are promised on the menu, and there’s none cooked into the panuchos. I shouldn’t have to ask if it’s on the menu, y’know?
January 18th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Was there a main dish?
January 18th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
SG, no main dish that day. We made a meal out of several antojitos, there were some unusual ones that caught my eye. Of them, the panuchos were the best.
January 21st, 2007 at 12:42 am
I should get down to Gabbi’s, given how much y’all are blogging about it.
January 29th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Just let me know when you want to meet me there, CP.