An empty stomach is the best cook: Guzman y Gomez

Saturday, 5 July 2008

Guzman y Gomez

While driving through Newtown on Friday the 13th, we were a little hungry sitting in slow traffic and we saw the above: an authentic Mexican restaurant. On the spur of the moment we pulled into a narrow little street to see if we could find a park. We found one straight away (a free one too!) right at the side of the restaurant, so it was meant to be.

We have never really had authentic Mexican. We love our commercialised tacos, burritos and nachos but we've never tried to real thing (well, I haven't, DD may be hiding things from me). On advice from the staff, we chose:

Nachos: corn chips, cheese, black beans, salsa and guacamole with beef guerrero (slow roasted beef in GYG's guerrero marinade with pico de gallo salsa).

Tacos: soft homemade corn tortillas, black beans, filling (DF steak and onion - grilled steak and onions in GYG's spicy chipotle marinade with pico de gallo and tomatillo salsa) and salsa.

It was amazing. The flavours were complex and so well developed and everything was so perfectly balanced. It made the Mexican we know and liked seem so manufactured. The chilli in DD's tacos was never overpowering and never overtook the other flavours, except he had a very dangerous green sauce he was putting on everything and that was quite hot.

The black beans were fabulous. I always thought that I wouldn't like beans in Mexican, but it turns out that these beans just make everything better. They also stain your cheese and cornchips black, but it's worth it. The beans don't have a pasty texture but are more creamy and seemed to amplify the flavours of everything else.

I'm ashamed to say that I thought that Mexican had to be served with sour cream, and now I am quite happy to say that I know now that good Mexican does not need it to be fantastically tasty.

We enjoyed our first dishes so much that we decided to try something else:

Quesadillas! Grilled soft corn tortillas, melted cheese and filling with salsas. We had both with the beef guerrero, I had the mild salsa and DD had a spicier version.

These were awesome too, we both loved them so much. We left feeling so full, but so satisfied. It was spectacular, fantasic, amazing... I loved it. We will definately be going back.