Pena's - CLOSED

OC Weekly Reviews and News

• [This Hole-in-the-Wall Life] The Best Pork Since Bacon

  By | Thu, January 31, 2008

  PEÑA'S RESTAURANT in Santa Ana has a large menu with all the Mexican food a native Southern Californian ever needs—tacos, enchiladas, burritos, carne asada. I've never tasted these platters at Peña's, nor do I plan to. Every time I visit this rece... More >

User Reviews

1 User review

• 

  ocweeklybestof

  | Wed, May 06, 2009

  You don't expect much from Peña's Restaurant the first time you visit—saddles for seats, too many portraits of charros and Pancho Villa, this tiny Santa Ana operation seems like a tourist trap worthy of Olvera Street. And the menu also seems Del Taco-bad upon a cursory reading—tacos, burritos, enchiladas . . . snore. But read the fine print. Notice that one of the meats available is cochinita pibil, a style of pork cooked in the Yucatan and about the closest it gets to piggy bliss: fatty, sweet, with a citrus tinge and lurking spices. Only three places in the county prepare cochinita pibil regularly, and Peña's does it best, stuffing it into a massive, crisped flour tortilla alongside pickled red onions. It's big enough to sustain you for a week.

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