Description
It may serve Guadalupe Valley Syrah instead of margaritas, and chiles en nogada instead of nacho plates, but Babita is a relaxed corner Mexican place with great food, an Eastside joint whose service is burnished to a white-tablecloth sheen. Chef-owner Roberto Berrelleza, who spent decades as a fancy-restaurant maitre d' before he ever strapped on a toque, is a scholar of Mexican cuisine, especially of the antojitos from his Sinaloan hometown Los Mochis, although a few of the restaurant's best dishes seem to have been invented by Berrelleza himself: fish-stuffed yellow chiles in strawberry salsa, seared fish with huitlacoche vinaigrette, and shrimp Topolobampo, a citrusy sauté of white wine, tomatoes and diced habanero peppers that takes over its victims' bodies like an Ebola infection. If Berrelleza's version of a Sinaloan machaca is on the menu - beef house-dried into a powder and fried with vegetables - you would be a fool to miss it.
