OnTheTable: La Cava Reorients Preconceptions with Fine Mexican Cuisine

LA CAVA 

Rating: 5/5

1755 S. 8th St. Suite D

www.LaCavaColorado.com

(719) 203-4297

Fri-Sat: 11am-10pm (until midnight with reservations), Tues-Thurs: 11am-10pm, Mon: Closed

Prices: $14-$38

What you need to know: Truly fine Mexican cuisine bends preconceptions with desirable uniqueness and unfaltering aesthetics 

Stop for a moment; forget everything your think you know about Mexican food. La Cava will rearrange your south-of-the-border presuppositions. Be open to this change.

Admittedly, finding the restaurant’s address is difficult. Once you’ve meandered your way through homogeneously nondescript buildings to suite D, enter into the renovated space. Walls clad in stone; wrought iron chandeliers hanging from wooden rafters; a patinaed bar, even after 100+ years of use, displaying dozens of fine tequilas—the ambiance enthralls. Yet, more captivating is the menu.

While their presence is predictable, the table-side guacamole ($16) and the house margarita ($10) were best-in-class, made possible by privately grown, California avocados, and hand-squeezed limes.

With the exception of chiles rellenos, mole poblano and taco medleys, it’s unlikely you are familiar with many of La Cava’s offerings, most of which are indigenous to states of Mexico, particularly Sonora, the birthplace of La Cava’s proprietor, Patricia Castrejon: chiles en nogada (poblano stuffed with shredded meats and dried fruits, topped with walnut sauce and pomegranate), enchiladas Sahuaripa (with queso fresco, scallions, red chile sauce), Sonoran rib-eye (with chorizo, grilled onions, chile tatemado), and chuleta Michoacan (pork chop, “burn” sauce, chorizo, potatoes).

But do not expect any dish to remain stagnant on the menu. Castrejon has a rotating repertoire of Sonoran recipes; shifting with the seasons and corresponding ingredients, diners will always be surprised with the novel.

Of particular note was the chiles en nogada ($27). Unlike anything that Anglos are accustom to, the dish teases with juxtapositions: cold and hot, sweet and spice. The pomegranate seeds and walnut sauce are sweet and intensionally cold. The warm, shredded and succulent pork and beef intermingle with a background of chili-heat, and a sweetness of dried pears and figs—all tucked into a large poblano pepper. The colors of the Mexican flag are represented in the white of the sauce, the red of the pomegranates and the green of the poblano. The presentation is stunning.

Stunning, too, was the Lamb Birra ($22). Flanked by only raw onions and cilantro (add to your taste), the focal point is clearly the slow-cooked lamb stewing in a deeply unctuous broth. The stew is presented, almost as if directly from the campfire, in a miniature, enameled camp pot, complete with lid. Again, the presentation is captivating.

Such beauty extends also to dessert where, within a UFO like martini glass, the Chongos ($6, nougat like and reminiscent of a Milky-Way, served with house-made vanilla ice cream) mixes with a caramel sauce for a dulce de leche-esque experience. Indulgent, stunning and captivating.

There is a fine line between good and great cuisine, and much of that line consists of aesthetics. The adage is true: you eat first with your eyes. Unlike ubiquitous Mexican establishments that seek to impress with the shear immensity of their dishes (“Two square feet of rice and beans, please.”), La Cava can’t fail to impress with their eye for beautiful cuisine. They have not merely taken the higher road, but rather a different road altogether. The term “Mexican food” has clearly been usurped by inferior iterations. Allow La Cava to offer you a taste of what Mexican food can truly be.