Jen and I have been restaurant hopping for a few days straight, dropping into a few of our favorite spots in Portland and trying some new ones.  Then voila, a spinach salad stopped us in our tracks.

On the way home we had dropped by Autentica, a restaurant serving up traditional Mexican food inspired by the cuisine of Guerrero Mexico, where owner and Executive Chef Oswaldo Bibiano grew up.

Sitting at the counter of the open kitchen, we ordered two of their nicer tequilas of the silver persuasion, a delicate and light I forget what and a warm, smooth, fruity I forget what (sorry). Chef Bibiano recommended we try fish, the filete de pescado con oro verde ($19), which today was lingcod served over a fresh avocado sauce and a jicama salad. “Fresh and spicy and clean – great the hot day today.

It was getting to be dusk, the sky was scudding a few faint clouds outside the windows, and we were probably a little hopped up from a chili pepper infused tequila Margarita at our previous stop, Toro Bravo.

We ordered the bisteck de bola con chile mole ($20), which is a grilled cascade sirloin steak served over a traditional dried chile sauce with a side of sautéed fresh cactus. I guess because we were supposed to be “hopping” restaurants and not actually eating at them, we also kept it light by ordering the espinaca con limon ($8): “spinach tossed with spicy lime juice, red onions, cilantro and avocado.”

The food arrived: salad a tall haystack of spinach ribbons laced with a startling, citrusy dressing and crunchy-sweet macerated onions. We were, totally blown away. Dag nabbit if this was not the best spinach salad I have ever had in my life. The steak was done perfectly, tender, lounging atop and in a powerfully spicy and full flavored sauce. Three nice salsas and a basket of tortillas hot off the hands of the tortillarista (my tortilla barista) working at the far end of the kitchen.

So, halfway through the little snack we were supposed to be having before bopping off home, we ordered the fish (and another tequila and a Pacifico to keep us afloat). The fish arrived, piping hot and flakey and not-flakey-because-it-was-also-tender-and-chunky atop cool sauce with crisp vegetables atop it. Atop is a nice word.

The fish was beautiful, super subtle but also super flavorful: angelfire and friskiness to the steak’s demonic flood of brooding. When I was a kid I lived in Mexico, ate catfish gifted to me by the lake fishermen, bought steamed corn with lime and chili powder from the passing senoras, played with sparklers in the houses of neighbors, shutters drawn to make sparkly night in the daytime. How you take onions and spinach and lime and turn that into the fragments another time I cannot say. But it was a good spinach salad.

markbitterman :: Aug.07.2008 :: Recently Visited :: No Comments »