All Over the Map
Shaped like a boat getting ready to cast off across Ashland, El Barco isn’t short on gimmicks: menus are so absurdly gigantic that one covers half of a four-seat table, and many selections come on huge troughlike platters. The house-made salsas are very good; the tostadas they come with less so. We enjoyed some excellent grilled squid and octopus, fresh and meaty, with a slight char that contrasted nicely with the tender white flesh. The breaded fish and shrimp on our mixed seafood grill, however, could have come from the kitchen of Señora Paul’s. The signature dish at El Barco is huachinango, red snapper, which we saw perched in front of about half the diners in the place. Available with a variety of sauces, this whole cooked fish is mounted upright on a rack for easy access and pierced with a number of red plastic swords, as though done in by a mermaid matador. The downside to this presentation is that the fish isn’t cooked in the sauce. Still, the moist, flavorful meat alone is worth a trip. —David Hammond
$$Mexican, Seafood | Lunch: friday-sunday; dinner: seven days | Saturday & Sunday brunch | Open late: Friday & Saturday till midnight, monday-thursday till 11
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The Sunday-morning pork rush at Carnitas Don Pedro presents a trial of forbearance appropriate for the after-church crowd. First one must worm one’s way between two counters and a handful of small tables to the back of the line, which may snake into the kitchen, where sturdy men are stirring giant brass vats of roiling pig parts with paddles. Whether you’re in the line for a table or the line for takeout, you’ll be inching forward among a scrum of customers, cooks, and waitresses. If you’re taking out, you’ll eventually return to the front of the store, where birria, barbacoa, menudo, brain tacos, and a piquant cactus salad are ordered on the right side; chicharrones, fresh chorizo, and mountains of glistening, steaming carnitas on the left. Specify meat, fat, offal, or some of each and the man with the long knife chops it, piles it high in a cardboard boat, wraps it tight in butcher paper, then hands you a sizable snack to help you fight the urge to break into the package on the way home. At $5.80 a pound, the well-seasoned carnitas here are among my favorites in the city—the high turnover ensures they’re hot and juicy, and they come with a brilliantly flavored dark green salsa flecked with plenty of red chile. Open weekdays 6 AM-6 PM, Saturday 5 AM-5 PM, Sunday 5 AM-2:30 PM. —Mike Sula
La Casa del Pueblo1834 S. Blue Island | 312-421-4664
Tired of dull, tasteless beef? Then get to La Cecina and savor the salt-dried traditional steak of Guerrero: when rehydrated and grilled, cecina is deliciously toothy and succulent. Other representative foods from Guerrero include a guajillo-spiked chicken soup in a bright red broth with fresh squash and carrot. This place is swimming with seafood: fried smelts were especially tasty spritzed with lime, and ceviche was helium light. My dining partner had grilled seafood with gently charred chunks of octopus, shrimp, and, alas, krab in a light sauce. Less routine menu items include quail, game hen, and bull’s testicles. The tortillas at La Cecina are handcrafted, and we enjoyed quesadillas with requeson, Mexico’s answer to ricotta, and fish (minced and fried in the tortilla). No booze is served, but there are healthful beverages including a fresh-squeezed concoction of mixed veggies and fruits and a milk shake of mamey, a starchy, honey-tinged tropical fruit. —David Hammond
$Mexican | Lunch, dinner: seven days | Cash only| BYO
