In keeping with their tradition of attracting most of the cool new restaurants that want to come into the area, Forest Park now has AXcan, a promising Mexican place.
Making tortillas in-house is my personal sine qua non for judging a Mexican restaurant’s quality: if they use store-bought tortillas, they might be a good place, but there’s no way they can be a great place. AXcan makes their tortillas and tamales in house, so that’s a good start.
For an appetizer, I had the tamal ($5.75), served in a tomato sauce with crema and a side salad of arugula. The tamale was good, with a lot of masa and a little beef, which is fine with me, as the masa was lushly soft and lightly flavorful. I’d read some comments on LTHForum.com about the saltiness of the food here, and man, the tamales were salty but the salad had oceanic levels of salinity. Now, I understand the word “salad” actually derives from the word for salt, so I expect some salt in my salad, but this was crazy salty. I actually used tortilla chips to swab what seemed to be accreting crystalline deposits off my tongue – and this from a guy who salts his pizza! Salt is my favorite condiment – I have like eight varieties at home – but this was way, way too much salt.
The Torta Ahogada (“drowned sandwich,” $8.75; comes with soup of the week) is one of my favorite Mexican street food items: it’s carnitas (pork confit) in a big white-flour roll, usually with pickled onions, and drenched (more or less) with tomato sauce (thus, “drowned”). I’ve had huge messy fistfuls of this sandwich on Maxwell Street, and more refined versions at Xoco on Wells, and it’s the later version that is followed here. No surprise in that both Executive Chef Enrique Gomez, and the Sous Chef Fernando Manriquez studied in the School of Rick (Bayless). This was a nice sandwich, full of meat, though I’d prefer a little more sauce to help the sandwich earn its name and to help fight the great enemy of all sandwiches: dryness.
Surprisingly, the cream of Poblano chili pepper soup that accompanied the sandwich was perhaps my favorite part of the meal. My server warned me that it would be hot with chili heat, and it was, but that heat balanced out the creaminess and the taste of the pepper was nicely complemented by fried onions floating on top of the soup. This is a very good soup. If I go back for lunch, I may get just a bowl of this soup and some tortilla chips (store-bought, but gently warmed before they’re brought to the table along with two good salsas: a garlicky green one and another that I’m guessing had a chili Arbol base).
I like this place, and I do recognize that it’s just getting off the ground, so a few missteps, like over-salting, can be forgiven (but guys, really, you need to proofread your menu copy: Rick Bayless’ name is spelled incorrectly, two different ways – “bayles” and “Baileys” – on the menu, and I pray that Enrique’s published nickname, Kike, is not pronounced the way it’s written). Incidentally, the place is pronounced “ASH-ken,” which rhymes with Ashton (as in Kutcher), and it means “new beginning” in Nahuatl, the ancient language of the Aztec.
There’s a lot of other promising stuff on the menu. They have mole verde, but also manchamanteles, which is less commonly seen, and I think it’s cool that they’re offering tongue tacos and chayote, neither of which you’re going to find on the menu at Maya del Sol or even the nearby Ricardo’s Place. Both of these menu items reflect a down-home Mexican influence which is sometimes neglected in Mexican restaurants that are striving for more high-toned offerings, which AXcan definitely seems to be.
AXcan
7404 W. Madison St.
708.689.8870
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