That's Hot

Esquada's place sits on the distinctly less glamorous side of the street, in a visually unremarkable strip mall anchored by a Chinese buffet on one end and a check-cashing operation on the other. Esquada and his brother-in-law, Alejandro Hernandez, took over this storefront after the previous tenant, Swagat Fine Indian Cuisine, packed up and moved to snazzier digs inside Zona Rosa. As at Esquada's other restaurant, the 10-year-old Guadalajara Café on Kansas City's south side, small color prints of Frida Kahlo paintings and a few vintage photographs of the iconic Mexican painter adorn the walls, which have been hand-ragged in a shade of cooked squash.

Business was a little slow at first, but Esquada says his public has found him and people are coming in for dishes that aren't of the Tex-Mex persuasion. To further distance himself from those supposedly Mexican restaurants that appeal to the yellow-cheese people, he has dropped items such as fried ice cream and dessert chimichangas.

That's fine with me, but I have friends who like that sort of stuff — including Franklin, who joined Debbie and me for dinner one night. And as soon as we settled into a booth at the back of the dining room, Esquada arrived and began proselytizing.

"Let me dispel a few myths about Mexicans," he said in his deep, sexy voice. "The truth is, we don't drink Corona beer or frozen margaritas. We do not eat Tex-Mex combination plates or burritos covered with melted cheddar cheese.

I looked across the table and saw Franklin wince. He loves thick, meat-filled tortillas drenched in melted queso, but I realized that he would be far too intimidated to order one now. Esquada wasn't merely our server that night; he owned the place and, obviously, knew best.

"Well, why don't you bring me what you think I should have for dinner," Franklin told him.

This time I winced. I knew that Esquada would probably serve a traditional Mexican dish that Franklin, who can be a fussy eater, wouldn't like. Whatever happened, though, promised to be interesting.

Franklin likes guacamole, so we started with that and an order of quesadillas de flor calbaza — soft corn tortillas folded around cheese and squash blossoms and sautéed in butter. Esquada made it clear that if we were sophisticated, we would also have ordered the quesadilla made with cuitlacoche. Ixtapa's menu describes this delicacy as "corn mushrooms," but sophisticated foodies prefer the term "corn smut" to describe the ugly black fungus that infects ears of corn, swelling the kernels to 10 times their normal size. American farmers call the fungus a plague, but the ancient Aztecs loved eating it, even if their word, cuitlacoche, roughly translates as black excrement.

I was too yellow to try it that night, but I might order it someday because the Ixtapa crew sautés it with wine and goat cheese. The menu insists that the dish is "to die for."

Debbie and I liked the less exotic squash-blossom version, but Franklin's guacamole wasn't quite defrosted; it tasted more like an avocado sorbet.

Turned on by Esquada's basso, Debbie took his recommendation for camarones borrachos: shrimp cooked in an oddball — but tasty, it turned out — concoction of orange juice, beer, paprika and wine. The sauce, vividly orange but watery, was heavier on brew than on citrus, but Debbie greedily ate the crustaceans with soft slices of fresh avocado.

I couldn't resist ordering the Steak Ranchero, if only because the menu description ended with a command in capital letters: DON'T MISS IT! When it arrived, the beef slices had been sautéed in some mysterious special sauce and jalapeño slices — it was pleasant enough but didn't live up to its marching orders.

Esquada decided on pollo al chipotle for Franklin, who took one taste and gasped for water. It's a fiery number, all right, with sautéed chicken, broccoli and carrots in a smoked-chili cream sauce. I thought it was excellent, but Franklin sulked: "I wish I had ordered a burrito."