Description
Of the many, many Oaxacan restaurants that line Pico Boulevard in what is somehow called the Byzantine Latino District (as if the hundreds of Korean businesses in the area barely exist, and the native speakers of Zapotec don’t probably form at least a plurality), perhaps the most accessible is Las 7 Regiones de Oaxaca. You can get tlayudas, of course, the tough, pizza-size flour tortillas smeared with beans, string cheese and grilled Oaxacan chorizo. The Oaxacan-style chicken soup with rice isn’t bad — strong stock, lots of meat. The big, wet banana-leaf-wrapped tamales sluiced with black mole are delicious. And Las 7 Regiones’ barbacoa — a fiery, complex stew of goat — is a powerful beast. But it is Las 7 Regiones’ coloradito, its version of one of the famous seven moles of Oaxaca, that is a really remarkable concoction — thick and dense and sweet-hot and unctuous, the product of hours of labor and probably 20-odd toasted seeds and chiles and spices.
