The result is probably my favorite dish at the Gastro Cantina, the one that best sums up how the food here combines tradition and invention, knowledge and playfulness. The fried won tons are plated on a tangy red salsa reduction with white beans. He uses cabrito (kid goat), slow-cooks it in spices, and then folds the meat into Asian won ton wrappers. Rojas takes birria back to his Michoacán roots-sort of. Which meat depends on which region of Mexico you’re in and what is available. The term “birria” is a flexible one, though, originally referring to a meat stewed in a spicy broth. Now, though, corn season is gone and so is the elote.īirria has become a culinary phenomenon across the United States, and dunking a birria taco in broth has become one of Instagram’s most popular foodie flexes. In early July, I shared an indulgently creamy cup of elote, into which Rojas and his cooks tipped a helping of an imported French butter that contains diced-up white truffles. Some of the new classics are only available seasonally. This dish has a kick, which is why it is served on a mellow bed of black beans with a swirl of crema, and why you may want to cut up your chile and fold it into a corn tortilla. The filling is cochinita pibil, a spicy, citrus-marinated pork. Rather than the cheese-stuffed poblanos familiar in Texas, the restaurant uses caribe peppers, the name of which reflects the capiscum’s Caribbean origin. Revolver’s chile relleno takes its inspiration from the Yucatán. (Push the leaves through the salsa if you need dressing.) The stew’s flavor notes rhyme with Hungarian goulash, and the enchiladas are served with a small salad instead of rice or beans. Enchiladas are folded over a hearty stew of quail, potatoes, and carrots. Guacamole, for example, has a new, bright high note because Rojas employs yuzu instead of lime. Many of the dishes at Gastro Cantina are familiar to Dallas diners but pushed in different directions, rethought if not reinvented. (That is why Revolver has always had Dallas’ best, most flavorful tortillas.) Here, the beef is from Wagyu breeds, and the tortillas are made fresh to order, by hand, from nixtamalized heirloom corn sourced from Mexico. It also prizes top-quality ingredients, challenging Americans’ nonsense belief that Mexican food must be cheap. Like the original Revolver, the new restaurant emphasizes the flavors of Rojas’ home state, Michoacán. As you sit at the long, skinny bar, you can drink tequila, snack on salted nuts, and watch sports on TV while eating boldly flavored food that pushes Dallas to expand its collective palate. The Gastro Cantina, however, allows you to enjoy the advantages of both-the sophisticated high-end cooking of La Resistencia and the rebellious attitude of Taco Lounge-along with an impressive liquor selection and that colorful patio. The original dual-purpose space remains around the corner, serving takeout tacos and evening tasting-menu dinners. It fills in the middle ground between his two other concepts, the ultra-casual Revolver Taco Lounge and the reservation-only La Resistencia. This is his new spot, Revolver Gastro Cantina. Along its length runs a glass-walled bar-the new domain of Deep Ellum’s leading master of culinary festivities, Regino Rojas. Inside the alley, round picnic tables, festive plants, and colorful decorations have transformed an abandoned space into a welcoming one. Guarding the entryway, where a garage door used to roll shut against intruders, is a posh ice cream shop. Now this neglected shortcut is the life of the party. Radiator Alley became a place you wished you could walk through while you fumed at the padlock in your way. Then, though, they seem to have had second thoughts. The space was a radiator factory before that, until its Deep Ellum owners transformed it into a cut-through between two buildings, a quick way to walk from Elm Street to Main. Not just a quiet alley but a dead one: blocked off from public access, behind a locked door.
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