La Condesa Chris Mortenson La Condesa

La Condesa

Cuisine: Mexican
Go loco and local with La Condesa.
Openings: Lunch & Dinner daily

Features

La Condesa, St. Helena, CA


La Condesa Restaurant Review:


St. Helena, for all its posh galleries, cult wineries and A-list dining options, also manages to loosen up for refined fun. Take La Condesa. It leverages the former landmark Keller’s meat market space, both by keeping the retro sign out front and by sprucing up the bar with a horned Mexico City bull, post-bullfight. Frisky Spanglish posters splash sayings like “tengo hungry por tu lovin’” on Tiffany blue walls. Choose a brown, '70s living room couch-style banquette for a sangría, or else the mobile lounge, sometimes sidewalk adjacent, other times in back behind beaded curtains. The menu of not-so-small plates and tacos with a handful of jumbo platters uses local, organic ingredients. Try a guac sampler with spins like strawberry-pepita seed or shrimp-peach. Raw tuna tostaditas have smoky underbellies of habanero mustard and chipotle mayo. Tacos include cochinita pibil, smoky-sweet pork shoulder braised for four hours with achiote and charred oranges inside banana leaves, and fried shrimp tucked in with chipotle-laced coleslaw. Roasted chicken enchiladas rest in tomatillo mole verde, enhanced by mushrooms caramelized bacon-crisp. The tequila and mezcal selection warrants attention, as does the seasonal, small-batch experimental ice cream --- possibly mint-cilantro chip, avocado-coconut curry or apple crema tequila, that all taste exactly as billed.