Patio dining at Ninfa’s Uptown full of pleasant surprises
“Who orders salmon at a Mexican restaurant?”
That’s what I asked myself this past Friday, as I sat on the very socially distanced, open-air back patio at Ninfa’s Uptown.
Not just the Scottish salmon in front of me, grilled by chef Alex Padilla and company on hot stones, no less, seemed improbable. My very presence at a restaurant, 15 weeks to the day after my last gingerly trip to one, felt slightly surreal.
A younger friend, aware that I was going stir-crazy at home, had encouraged me to venture forth to dine where I’d feel safe-ish. Remembering the spacious patios wrapping the fancy new Ninfa’s on San Felipe at Post Oak, and Googling to check the pandemic precautions in place, I decided, “I can do this.”
The fact that it was Friday night, the sacred time for Texans to go for Mexican food, may have had something to do with my sudden resolve. I’d been missing that ritual fiercely. Duplicating it with curbside pickup, to eat at home in solitary confinement, was not at all the same thing.
My patio plans were complicated by a sudden rainstorm. Umbrellatopped tables dotting the uncovered sections were pummeled by sheets of water when I arrived. The covered portion — airconditioned and mostly enclosed with vinyl against the summer heat, which made it kind of a nonstarter for me — had sprung a few makeshift-ceiling leaks.
But the staff was uniformly masked and helpful in the face of my sudden qualms. They led me back, back, back, past new plexiglass room dividers shielding widely spaced dining room tables, to a covered back patio with only four tables and a whole lot of open air. An ivied trellis fence let the breeze through, and the weather app on my phone showed a near-miraculous temperature of 79.
“This works for me,” I said gratefully. I ordered my favorite cocktail, bar consultant Linda Salinas’ Road to Oaxaca. It glowed in its tumbler, mezcal and pineapple tinged with guava to a shade of sunset peach. “It’s so beautiful I want to cry,” I half-joked to my friend when she showed up.
We devoured many tortilla chips with Ninfa’s red and green salsa. As one does. Then somehow I found myself eating a ringingly pure riff on matzoh ball soup — “Masa Ball Soup” declared chef Alex Padilla with a twinkle — anchored by a soft masa dumpling and a six-minute egg as lush as any that ever graced a bowl of ramen.
Soft chicken shreds and carrot lapped by gentle broth and sprigged with cilantro would have kept me happy on their own, but I kept marveling over the thin crescents of celery in the soup. They were still a little crisp, not sauteed into softness. They held their shape, and their pleasantly astringent flavor.
It was one of those genius little touches that can make a dish, and Padilla — who knows me on sight and is always trying to nudge me past my eternal Ninfa’s favorites — is full of such surprises.
Before coming back to his hometown, Houston, for the Ninfa’s job in 2006, Padilla soaked up influences in San Francisco, where he cooked at James Beard Award-winning chef Nancy Oakes’ Boulevard restaurant. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust him when he’s got a special he’s excited about, no matter how much I think I must order fajitas or my favorite Tex-Mex combo plate.
That’s how I ended up eating his lovely Masa Ball Soup, and afterward a puffy shrimp taco the chef has been tinkering with. Lordy, it was fine: the corn tortilla shell delicately inflated and shattery to bite; the shrimp as pearly as could be; the combo of pasilla chile sauce and a touch of chipotle mayo was head spinning, even before the dark herbal twinge of epazote edged in, cutting the richness.
After those tacos, I felt pretty much helpless to resist the idea of the Scottish salmon special, however un-Mexican and unGulf Coasty it seemed.
Its passage over hot lava rocks gave the fish a taut gilded crust and a soft, slippy flake. Just right. And the disparate elements clicked together, from a laid-back poblano sauce to fat little bulb onions confited in butter to chewy little blue masa orbs studded with something that crackled and popped.
“Toasted crushed rice!” announced Padilla with a certain glee.
“Why the hell not?” I asked myself as I chased down the last scraps of blue masa and green sauce on my plate. I thought, not for the first time, that Padilla is one of the most underrated chefs in Houston. And I treasured the unexpectedness of my meal, exulting in that sense of adventure and surprise that can galvanize a restaurant experience.
Those are qualities I hadn’t even realized I had missed during five months of ordering food online and picking it up at curbside.
I’m still not ready for a dining room experience while Houston’s COVID numbers are elevated and questions about ventilation safety still up in the air. But for people who are, Ninfa’s appears to be taking sound precautions — even keeping capacity around 45 percent during peak periods Uptown, rather than pushing it.
For now, just the thought that I can get an outdoor table where I can feel reasonably safe — at least enough to enjoy my meal and keep my nerves in control — will keep me going, and hoping for more. For all of us.