BYO tequila no more, Lolita is all grown up
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
It was five years into the new millennium. I was a freshly minted college grad with a flip-phone in my pocket and a fifth of Cuervo in my fist. A maelstrom of Restaurant Week humanity vibrated behind the smoky glass storefront of Lolita, a-year-old Mexican BYOT — ‘T’ for tequila, hence the bottle in my hand — from a former Audrey Claire chef who also owned the housewares boutique across the street in this “up-and-coming” neighborhood.
I pushed inside to meet friends for dinner. It was dark and noisy as a nightclub in a cave, with the turn-and-burn service of a restaurant in hell. The staff rushed, we lingered. Fresh strawberry-basil margarita mix flowed as we took turns playing bartender and ordered sophisticated carne asada filet mignons in pools of plantain crema.
Nine years later, things have changed. I wear less gel in my hair, and my tastes in tequila have improved. That up-and-coming ’hood is a full-fledged juggernaut of commerce, one of the city’s most vital strips where chef Marcie Turney has built an eight-business empire with partner Valerie Safran.
Skirt, flank and rib eye get more play in my steak rotation than dull filet mignon these days, and I tend to keep strawberries in my shortcakes and out of my cocktails. Yet, there I was, nine years after my first dinner at Lolita, back in the restaurant with a strawberry-basil margarita and the carne asada. I didn’t have to bring my own booze this time; Turney and Safran celebrated the restaurant’s 10th birthday by securing Lolita a liquor license, the centerpiece of a total overhaul that refreshed décor, moved the kitchen, installed a bar and renewed the room’s energy. Little Lolita now looks and feels like its younger sister, Barbuzzo.
Down to its plantain-chip garnish, balanced on top like a seesaw, the carne asada is the only item from the original menu that survived the transition to a street food, Mexico City-inspired focus. I get its presence for posterity — it’s the dish that started it all for Turney and Safran — but its creamy sweetness, brash spice and overbearing size seemed out of date and out of place among the petite, colorful, snacky plates it followed. “It had to stay,” Turney says of the sacrosanct asada. In Lolita 1.0’s heyday, “We were going through two cases of tenderloins a week. It was fucking nuts.” Now, its presence is also a function of the need for enough trim to cover the crazy popular Korean barbecue filet-tip tacos, one of Roy Choi’s many bastard stepchildren spread across the States. With a marinade that counts sriracha, ginger and sesame among its ingredients, a verdant Thai basil salsa verde and jicama kimchi that I wish had been more potent, the only Mexican things about these tacos are the tortillas.
But, oh, what tortillas they are, featherweight and warm, made twice daily on a hand-cranked Lenin tortilladora slumbering like a beast in the basement. They upheld other toppings on Lolita’s new menu: “Cholula fried” chicken, orange-and-canela carnitas, mahi mahi in cornflake crumbs and whatever’s “Spinning on the Trompo,” the nightly special cooked on the kitchen’s vertical spit. Thin, fat-rippled shavings of pork al pastor, roasted between pineapples and onions and basted in guanciale fat, appeared the night I dined, along with inkblots of brooding salsa negra, cool aguacate and sweet-tart pineapple salsa.
Fried squash blossoms, another special on the chalkboard hanging by the entrance, shouldn’t be missed while early summer keeps vines aflower. Stuffed with ricotta flecked with lemon zest, you’d think they got lost on their way to Barbuzzo; roasted jalapeño and tomato-corn salsa put the crispy blossoms in context.
I couldn’t fall in love with the dry vegetable-topped garden nachos or the chopped salad, a treasure hunt for fresh garbanzos, charred corn kernels and pepitas in a three-lettuce hedge soaked in buttermilk-herb dressing.
Get the chicharrones instead, big, beautiful, smoked and fried pork skin dusted in Turney’s “chich powder,” an addictive blend of cumin, coriander, paprika and dehydrated vinegar. They broke into shards with audible snaps. I dipped them like fries into accompanying cups of habanero hot sauce and cool spring onion ranch. I may have even snuck one into my Michelada, a mug of Modelo Especial dosed with the smoky house salsa roja, lime and spices. It’s one of my favorites, and like its cousin, the bloody mary, crafting a mix takes an almost culinary approach. Turney and beverage director Terence Lewis delivered, as did their rainbow of margaritas, which supplement the usual suspects with flavors like cucumber-jalapeno and beet.
My fresh grapefruit Paloma, meanwhile, arrived with a candy-striped paper straw that looked great but disintegrated, and a scoop of prickly pear sorbet sinking into the drink like the sun into the horizon. The magenta ice gives the drink its “Violeta” surname, but I’d rather have it in a bowl for dessert with the lush avocado-lime helado and floral, tangy passion fruit nieve. The sweet coconut tres leches was heated to order in the tamale steamer, a trick that’s clever but made the cake as warm and damp as a Yucatan jungle. Still, I’ll eat it. It’s only polite to have some cake at a birthday party, and Lolita is rightly celebrating all year long. Ten years is a long time in the restaurant business. When Turney and Safran blow out the candles, I know what they’ll wish for: 10 more.
LOLITA |106 S. 13th St., 215-546-7100, lolitaphilly.com. Daily, 5 p.m.- midnight. Appetizers, $4-$15; tacos, $10-$12; entrees, $17-$24; dessert, $6-$8.
