La Casita Mexicana

When you sit down at La Casita, the spiritual home of Mexican cooking in Los Angeles at the moment, you are brought a basket of warm chips drizzled with jet-black mole poblano, a chile-laced red pepian and a green pepian made from crushed pumpkin seeds: the dense, complexly sweet mother sauces that are at the heart of La Casita's cooking. Chefs Jaime Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu are everywhere if you follow Spanish-language media, demonstrating recipes on the Univision morning show, opening supermarkets, on billboards advertising Mexican avocados. They dominate the food pages of La Opinión, and no local discussion of mole poblano, nopalitos or chilaquiles is complete until they have had their say. The two haunt communal farms, looking for huazontle, hoja santa and nopales as fresh and beautiful as they might be in the Jalisco villages they grew up in. But mostly there is the cooking: a half-dozen different kinds of chilaquiles at breakfast, a beautiful purple-corn pozole, delicious enfrijoladas, and an impeccable version of chiles en nogada, the most famous dish of haute Mexican cuisine. See full review.

• Cuisine(s): Latin American, Mexican

  Hours: Daily 9am-10pm

  Price: $$

• Payment Types: All Major Credit Cards

  Features: Catering, Takeout

  Serving: Dinner, Lunch

• Alcohol: Beer/Wine

  Reservations: Accepted, Not Accepted

  Parking: Lot Available, Street