Common sense tells us that some Veracruzanos eat breakfast at home, but with so many other tempting options, the question is, “Why would you?”
It is around 10:30 in the morning and we are at Antojitos Lolita, a modest white stucco restaurant in central Veracruz with a cheerful crazy quilt of mismatched tile running around the interior. Today is the Dia de Los Compadres and on the television mounted high in one corner, a talk show hostess oozes warmth as she interviews rosy-cheeked children and their doting godparents. Outside the air is just beginning to steam; inside, alluring smells wafting from the kitchen have stirred the ravening wolf.
Lolita’s is a breakfast mecca, with a long menu of typical Veracruz specialities such as picadas and gordas, as well as eggs, or huevos, fixed many different ways, each more tempting than the last. As well, we could order bistec ranchero, chicken enchiladas in salsa verde, empanadas stuffed with shrimp or crab, and for dessert, coconut and pineapple tamales.
Susana, Deborah, Silvia and I settle for good strong café con leche and freshly squeezed juice from the state's divinely sweet oranges. Our waiter takes our order, never batting an eye even when we ask for tastes of almost everything. Soon we are sampling an assortment of salsas plunked down the center of the table: fiery chipotle (a regional favorite made with a smokey dried chile), cooked tomato with charred jalapenos, milder salsa verde with avocado, onions, fresh jalapeno and garlic; and a dark, tropical mole enriched with chocolate, almonds and peanuts, and sweetened with raisins, bananas, prunes and sugar. Three dried chiles--mulato, ancho, and pasilla add heat. This luscious mole is cooked in a clay pot, for 5 to 6 hours.
And then a dozen plates arrive. Here’s a little of what we’re eating:
Picadas: Handmade tortillas, gently fried in manteca, or lard, and shaped to form a little dish with raised edges. You can order them lots of different ways, filled with any of the house salsas or with longaniza, a spicy, salty local sausage, seared steak, chicken, eggs, or chicharon, crackling pork rind. I am seduced by a picada with tomato, onions and queso fresco, a fresh crumbly white cheese, topped with avocado. I add black beans and smokey chipotle salsa. I could stop right here and be forever happy.
Gordas: Masa, or cornmeal dough, is shaped into little rounds and fried in manteca until it puffs up—hence their name which could be translated as “fatties.” At Lolita’s, gordas come three way: blancas, which are plain; dulce, sweeted with piloncillo, dark unrefined sugar and flavored with anise; or negras, mixed with black beans and salt and served with a cooked tomato salsa. All three are irresistible.
Huevos: Eggs at Lolitas can be ordered in more than a dozen hearty styles. We try huevos tirados, a Veracruz specialty, and fall in love with the smooth richly flavored refried black beans mixed with lightly scrambled eggs. Huevos a la veracruzana, scrambled eggs inside a soft, folded tortilla, lightly sautéed in manteca, topped with chorizo, queso fresco and chiles, are a close second.
Senora Delores Gomez Mencilla, the small, energetic woman who runs the kitchen and whose curiosity has been piqued by reports of four women enthusiastically ordering everything in sight, comes out to meet us. After a quick chat with Susana about her cooking school, she agrees to take us behind the scenes and show us a trick or two.
The sweltering two-room kitchen is a swirl of activity. Seven or eight cocineras, hair covered by white cotton cofias, or caps, are cooking gorditas on a hot plancha, blackening tomatoes and chiles on a long cast iron grill heated by red hot coals, and patting tortillas by hand. In the back, there are big bowls of salsa ready to be served with each order. I spot a football-sized, bright green-skinned avocado. Nearby a whole just-plucked chicken is about to go into a pot of broth for caldo tlalpeno.
There are also huge vats of those delicious black beans. Senora Mencilla tells us that after cooking the beans, they mash them by hand until they are smooth and creamy. Then comes one of her flavor secrets: In very hot manteca, onions are fried almost until they are burned, then removed from the fat. Whisk in a little flour, add the mashed beans and fry gently.
Outside, trucks are roaring past Lolita’s. A gutarist is strolling the restaurant, singing “Quarenta y Veinte,” (‘Forty and Twenty”), a romantic ballad by the popular singer Jose Jose. Lunch patrons are streaming in. It’s time to go.
Contact: Antojitos Lolita, 16 de Septiembre, no. 837, between Zapata and Escobedo. Telephone: 932-0760. Open 7AM to 7PM.