FOOD: Gualaguetza

Today I lunched at Gualaguetza, a piece of Oaxaca on the corner of Koreatown (only in LA). It’s all about the mole here, a thick sauce made of chilis, nuts, spices, hours of cooking, and in the negro version, chocolate. When you sit down, tortilla chips come covered in a sweet rich mole coloradito with queso fresco. There’s Oaxacan chocolate mixed with atole (a hot ground corn drink) called champurrado. And the main event, a chicken breast in a pool of rich mole negro, with rice, and corn tortillas with browned spots from the comal. And of course the Copa Mundial on the big screen, fun to watch with a crowd. I watched the Swiss beat Serbia. This place will be crazy fun tomorrow morning when Mexico plays South Korea! I definitely want to come back and try some more things, as there's quite an array of Oaxacan specialties, including chapulines (fried grasshoppers!). I'm intrigued, but also squeamish. (In the film "City of Gold", there's a scene with Jonathan Gold and Ruth Reichl munching on a plate of chapulines at this very restaurant, and talking about how we'd best get more used to eating insects, as it's our future.) I'd also try their cafe de olla next time, which might be a better way to cut the richness of the mole. Truth be told, the champurrado, a dish I'd never tried before, wasn't my favorite. I do love atole and who doesn't love chocolate. But I just didn't find the combination to be complimentary. And certainly not the 2+2=5 that you get from chocolate and peanut butter, or chocolate and hazelnuts, or even Guinness stout and chocolate (an awesome gelato). Or of course chocolate and chili in this awesome mole.