Gold Dig #68

Broken Spanish is one of the Mexican restaurants on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list. The wide rectangular space has a glass front wall and large bar in the center. It feels mostly modern, but has some rustic touches like a side wall hung with family photos and shelves full of clay pots.

The Dish

The modern Mexican menu includes a healthy dose of animal parts not commonly served in the US, such as lamb neck, pig snout, cock’s comb. Jonathan Gold describes it as something for a person of “a certain adventurous bent”. That sounds exactly like the kind of place I’d enjoy, so I was super excited to finally be checking it out.

Albondigas

The albondigas were duck meatballs with bacon, served in a chipotle salsa. Duck is one of my favorite meats, but I was disappointed to find that the flavor of these meatballs was indistinguishable from beef meatballs, perhaps because they were drowned in a sauce that I found to be overwhelmingly spicy rather than flavorful (and that’s saying something, because I really like spice!).

Pollo Prensado

The pollo prensado consists of chicken thigh, chicken skin, and cock’s comb in a guajillo sauce. I am a firm believer that dark meat is the best, and I was super excited to try cock’s comb, so this was a no-brained order for me. Unfortunately, this dish also failed to live up to expectations. I was really looking forward to the different textures from the various chicken parts, but found that it just sort of felt like a jumble. And I again found the spice to be overpowering rather than enhancing… I’ve eaten a lot of spicy food and that’s never happened to me before, no less twice in one meal!

Mushrooms

The mushrooms came with fresh peas and parmesan… all things I love and they sounded like they would go great together. Sadly, they were drowned in an extremely sour sauce. I am a strong proponent of acidity in foods and usually feel that there’s not enough, but the sourness of this dish destroyed all the good earthy flavors of these wonderful ingredients. I like flavors on the more robust end, but the flavors at Broken Spanish were like a punch in the face.

Heirloom Corn Tortillas

We’d heard that Broken Spanish is known for their housemade tortillas, blue from the heirloom corn they use, and our waiter highly recommended that we get some to go with our small plates. These were also a letdown, crumbly and bland, though I supposed they did help to tamp down the overpowering flavors of the other dishes.

Chicharron

The chicharron was the saving grace of the meal. It was fantastic. Not like the crunchy fried pork rinds I think of as chicharron – this was more like pork belly encircled in a ring of chicharron. The outer ring was crisp, and the inside was fatty goodness, all soaking in a wonderful garlic mojo and topped with radish sprout and pickled herbs that provided some freshness to cut through the meatiness. It saved what would have otherwise been a total fail, which is such a bummer for a restaurant I’d been looking forward to for a long time.