Broken Spanish

Mexican restaurant in downtown Los Angeles

A clear bag neatly tied in a bundle arrives to the table. The waiter sets it down in front of us, unties the top, and releases aromas of chilies and spices—cumin, thyme, a touch of sweet from cloves or cinnamon—as the sides fall to the plate. Chunks of tender rabbit meat, nopales and bits of bacon swim in a fiery red sauce. The whole experience is pretty intoxicating.

Mixiote is a specialty of central Mexico, usually a stew cooked in parchment or banana leaf. It’s not found in a lot of restaurants around L.A., aside from some Latin enclaves like Boyle Heights and Highland Park. That’s the beauty of chef Ray Garcia’s mixiote: it’s the taste and tradition of a dish that he grew up eating, but with the refined touch of a fine dining cook. That’s Broken Spanish in a nutshell—the cuisine of a third-generation Angeleno combining his cultural influences with what he’s learned working in and helming kitchens at hotels like the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica and The Belvedere in Beverly Hills.

The restaurant sits on the ground floor of the prominent Met Lofts downtown. It’s a hop and a skip from the Staples Center, making pregame and post-show dinners and drinks much more interesting than the chains offered at L.A. Live. It’s also directly across the street from an outpost of the longstanding family-owned El Cholo restaurants. The two Mexican eateries couldn’t be more different. Where El Cholo is rustic and charming with big platters filled with enchiladas, sauce-drenched burritos, rice and refried beans, Broken Spanish is more refined and contemporary, with the help of renowned restaurateur Bill Chait, whose Sprout group owns a slew of critically acclaimed spots around town.

The entire space is colorful and inviting. Long and narrow, the restaurant spans from a counter where cooks prepare smaller dishes to a bar area with gray slate walls and is filled with tables and hanging plants. In the back room, rich cobalt blue hues, hutches filled with red clay plates, brown leather banquettes and huge sliding windows have transformed what was previously Riviera, a dark and sexy tequila den. It’s the kind of space where everyone can easily see what everyone else is eating; there’s a lot of pointing and “I’ll have that” going around.

I wonder if it’s challenging to open a Mexican restaurant with only one taco on the menu. It’s probably not what people expect. But Garcia already has an outlet for thick, handmade corn tortillas stuffed with everything from traditional carnitas to clams and pork fat at his more casual B.S. Taqueria, located a few blocks away. At Broken Spanish, the food riffs on soulful, earthy cuisine with the seasonality and flair you’d expect from a chef cooking right now in L.A.

Garcia doesn’t look to any one region for his dishes. The menu is really a combination of the things he knows and loves created with his own twists. His chile relleno, a dark-green poblano pepper stuffed with potato and kale, is drenched in a glorious soubise sauce. There are two different tamales, one a more traditional elongated version served in a cast-iron pan stuffed with chile-tinged stewed lamb neck meat and king oyster mushrooms. The other is like a round puck filled with fava puree, Swiss chard and peas, topped with a Sungold tomato salsa. Each is lovely and fluffy, with flavors that go straight to your soul.

I fell in love with many of the botanas, especially the requeson, tufts of a ricotta-like Mexican cheese topped with snap peas, black sesame sauce and sea beans. Or the rebanada, a slice of sweet pan dulce bread slathered with foie-gras butter. Don’t miss a chance to try the warm blue corn tortillas with lardo. They’re so much better than standard bread and butter.

Some of the larger dishes are definitely meant for a group, like the whole red snapper fried until crisp on the outside. The chicharron is something like Garcia’s version of porchetta. Sliced thick, a citrusy mojo sauce cuts right through the richness of the rolled pork with supercrisp skin. The chef, after all, won a national title in the roving Cochon 555 cooking competition. This guy knows his way around a heritage pig.

Desserts lean toward the more exotic and experimental. Dip into the sweet mango panna cotta and discover a pool of caramel sauce spiced up with habanero. The Abuelita hot chocolate is actually an ancho chile-spiked chocolate cake with candied cocoa nips topped with a cinnamon-spiced hot chocolate-like broth. They’re both unique.

It’s fun to see what a chef can do when he finally has free reign to follow his passion. At the hotel restaurants, especially Fig in Santa Monica, Garcia created wonderfully straight-forward seasonal cuisine. At Broken Spanish, he’s taking chances and finding just the right nuance for Mexican food that awakens the senses in every way.