Inside El Take It Easy with its beamed ceilings and exposed brick. (Photo by Paul Body)Maybe because Jay Porter’s new El Take It Easy is located in a Never Never Land called Tijuego, it has no use for such dreary relics of the 20th century as telephones, and has no intention to obtain one in the future. In Tijuego, communication does not require landlines.
Those of you who are quick on the uptake already have deduced that Tijuego is a conjugal contraction of Tijuana and San Diego, a name that promotes the notion that the side-by-side cities constitute a single metropolis. It’s a good argument, and one that won’t get any arguments from San Diegans who feel at home in Tijuana. This happens to be a sizeable group.
If you have trouble finding El Take It Easy in Tijuego, it may be easier to toddle over to North Park and amble up 30th Street to #3926, a spot that formerly housed an eatery called Apertivo, which specialized in Italian tapas. The small plates tradition has been handed on to El Take It Easy, which specializes in Mexican tapas. These are tapas that may well have you gaga before you’ve finished reading down the long, narrow, utterly fascinating menu of botanas (snacks) and raciones (larger servings).
Hot chocolate custard (Photo by Paul Body)At his original North Park restaurant, The Linkery, Jay Porter consistently has taken chances by offering the public cuts of meat, especially pork, that once were commonplace in America but now seem threatening to diners who are accustomed mostly to steaks and burgers and couldn’t tell a sweetbread from a lovely slice of liver, cooked Venetian-style with onions, sage and white wine. With El Take It Easy, Porter crosses a different line, aided by the very inventive, very daring Jair Tellez, who is culinary consultant. Tellez, chef-impressario of both the well-regarded Laja in the wine country near Ensenada and the Meretoro restaurant in Mexico City, fearlessly composes dishes that in some cases may have gastronomic roots in rural Mexico, and in some cases make you want to rename El Take It Easy as “El Get Me Out of Here.” One such occasion might happen were the botana of sautéed chicken spleens ($5) suddenly to appear on the table. How are they seasoned? Who knows? Chicken spleens quite fail to tempt a writer who has had rapturous encounters, especially in France, with sweetbreads, kidneys, liver, brains and other meats commonly grouped under the title of “offal.” Awful they’re not, and based on this, it might seem fairer to taste chicken spleens before relegating them to the dustbin of gastronomy. But life isn’t always fair.
In the age of the gastropub, El Take It Easy claims the title of gastro-cantina. Spacious and high-ceilinged, it features deep booths and communal tables, and in an era that seems to ignore dress, a server or two may sport a necktie. The room at first seems dark, and one wall is indeed painted black, but the deeply varnished tables are spotlighted and, in any case, the demi-gloom has its charming side. So does the music, which plays above conversations and lends an edge to chatter braced by inventive beverages and botanas (mostly $5) like peaches spiced with chile and lime, house-pickled vegetables (very delicate and tasty; $5) and grilled peppers, which may be Hungarian, or may be Padron peppers, seasoned with lemon juice and salt.
Goat Cazuela (Photo by Paul Body)An occasional specialty is a plate of golden almond figs, a rare variety that the kitchen splits and sprinkles with crushed red chile and lime juice. If you can get your mitts on some, be sure to savor this ultimate finger food. The occasional availability of some items places El Take It Easy right in the middle of the market-driven restaurant community, which is a good place to be. Hogs play quite a role in the cuisine, and under the heading “house cured charcuterie,” find the listing for country ham, at $13 the most expensive item served. This is a high-quality product, made from Berkshire breed pigs raised on a farm somewhere south of San Luis Obispo. Richer in effect, the pork belly-quail egg terrine also engages the tastebuds quite happily ($7). All kind of eggs show up on the menu, in a racione that pairs duck eggs with pork-jowl bacon ($9), and in torta-style “sliders” filled with eggs and goat. This latter ingredient might be a conversation starter were not other more compelling items quite abundant at El Take It Easy.
Whole Local Spot Prawn (Photo by Paul Body)Nothing is particularly conventional: empanadas are filled with plantains ($8), tostadas are topped with either summer squash ($7) or octopus ($8), slender fried taquitos are filled with slow-cooked rabbit ($7), and pork belly stuffs the tacos ($8). There are slowly simmered cazuelas built on such principal ingredients as pork, a combination of eggs and squash, and rabbit ($10 to $13), and if you really go bugs for bunny, the kitchen will send out spicy rabbit sausage sided with hand-cut pasta ($13).
For those who like to dine on the safe side, there are crisp-creamy fritters of chopped spot prawns bound with a smooth sauce ($12), clam ravioli with chorizo ($12), and chicken meatball soup ($8). El Take It Easy is not dedicated to those who belong to the El Play It Safe genre, though, and for the daring, it offers Kentucky-fried “buches,” which are chicken necks ($8), and—maybe you’d better sit down first—sweet-and sour fried chicken heads ($7). Well, no—maybe it’s snobby to dismiss these out-of-hand, but fried, sweet-sour or dressed in tiny party hats, chicken heads aren’t going to strut their stuff on this writer’s table. However, the neighboring table ordered both spleens and heads, and seemed perfectly happy with both dishes.
Given the strong flavors that flow through this menu, dessert is much in order, both fresh-from-the-fat churros served with a sweet dip ($7), and the day’s fruit cobbler ($8).
