![]() The hot salsa verde was our favorite, but you'll want to temper it with one of the sweeter varieties. SEVEN SALSAS: If you want to sample the restaurant's house-made salsas, order all of them. I took a seat on the multi-level patio that, like the interior, is sleek and cozy. ![]() ![]() There’s a bar with a brief cocktail menu and a window on the kitchen where that miracle masa is milled. Instead, it’s all about leather dining chairs, wickeresque pub chairs, wood tables, brick walls, and windows with a view of twinkling Summerhill. The restaurant’s interior is mercifully free of the usual Mexican kitsch. I mean, dude, you can get a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme Combo, including a complimentary colon cleansing, for $7.99! Really, people post stuff like that. ![]() But those tortillas make small tacos that cost $6 or $7. Confusingly, the restaurant responded to many of the complaints with the same notation that it grinds its own masa for its house-made tortillas. When I read 50 Google reviews of Boca, I found that no matter how much diners praised the food itself, a majority complained about the prices and portions. Dining out, which had become standard weeknights for many families, has returned to its older status as a weekend or special occasion dinner for many people. I confess that when I first saw the menu, I was taken aback by the prices myself, but I try to keep in mind that the restaurant industry is undergoing huge changes, largely because of inflation. Unfortunately, it is now clearly struggling with that price problem. Helio Bernal, the chef and owner, has long operated a pop-up, The Real Mexican Vittles, and has spent three years struggling to open D Boca N Boca amid the pandemic chaos. That brings me to the new D Boca N Boca, which opened in June, around the corner from me in Summerhill. It quickly closed because even Buckheaders refused to pay more than a few dollars for anything described as Mexican. After a few years of prospering at its present location at 10th and Piedmont, Chef Lucero Martinez-Obregon and her brothers opened a restaurant in Buckhead that included high-end dishes on par with Diana Kennedy’s lusher recipes.You can guess what happened. Both remain high-quality and inexpensive. While TDS is inspired mainly by Southwestern cuisine, Zocalo was spot-on Mexican. Then restaurants like Taqueria del Sol (nee Sundown Café) and Zocalo opened in town. Things began to change as Buford Highway became a corridor of inexpensive immigrant cafes. I raged constantly that there were no soft tacos I’d come to love, like chicharrones suaves en salsa verde - chunks of braised pork fat stewed in green sauce. When I returned to Atlanta as a lover of Mexican food, I was shocked that I couldn’t even find something as simple as a salsa verde in the city. It remains the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, but, mercifully, the repentant staffers soon introduced me to lots of taquerias serving incredible street food and eventually the more exotic and complicated cuisine described by Diana Kennedy in her book, “The Cuisines of Mexico.” (Kennedy died this year at 99.) We went to a café where I was handed a bag of Fritos, a cup of chili to pour into the bag, along with ingredients on a salsa bar. Hearing my confusion, my new staff treated (aka pranked) me with their own favorite Tex-Mex. I learned there that the Taco Bell chihuahua was eating really bad Tex-Mex, not “real” Mexican. I do not recall ever (willingly) eating any Mexican food again until I landed in Houston for two years in the mid ‘80s. I’m talking, running out the door and vomiting in the parking lot, not just because of the taste but because I have a lifelong digestive disorder that does not enjoy tons of grease speckled with stinky chili powder. I confess that, yes, my first taste of so-called Mexican food was at the first Taco Bell to open here in the ‘60s on Roswell Road near Wieuca. Mexican food is the most usual example example of this. We scour the countless restaurants there in search of “authenticity.” I don’t by any means exempt myself from that safari, but the reality is that even though we live in a time of xenophobic nationalism, many Americans - red or blue - have become avid consumers of food our mothers never heard of. I’m referring to what we have long called ethnic cuisine like you find on Buford Highway. There’s a problem that still hovers over every American restaurant that serves cooking outside the so-called mainstream.
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