A taste of Mexico without the lineup
This is a story about a small ethnic restaurant that grew up, got a liquor licence and sought its fortune on College St.
It begins in 2005, when Indalecio Marroquin picks a location at 126 Rogers Rd., next to an Italian barber shop.
The spot is close to the Mexican food artery of Dufferin St., with its bakeries and tortilla makers. He calls his humble taco joint Rebozos, after the shawl worn by peasant women.
Takeout is through the door on the left, the dining room is to the right. Homey is an understatement. The 24-seat restaurant is tricked out with red-checked ta- blecloths and a large TV mutely playing Mexican telenovelas. A few Christmas lights brighten the otherwise barren space.
Staffing is similarly barebones: A single server seems to double as the cook, efficiently bringing out the plastic-lined wicker baskets and cazuelas used as dinnerware here.
It’s simple stuff: A coarse mash of guacamole ($8) with commercial tortilla chips. Zippy chicken enchiladas ($14). Garlicky refried beans ($4).
Word spreads outside the Latin community, fuelled in part by you-gotta-try-it soups like pozole ($10), its chile-spiked pork broth spreading delicious heat through one’s thorax. Yet customers start to complain about travelling all the way to the city’s northwest corner.
Two years ago, Marroquin begins to look for a downtown location to expand.
Then comes 2012, the Year of the Taco. White guys everywhere are suddenly making newfangled Mexican food at Seven Lives Tacos, Food Dudes food truck, Toucan Taco Bar (since closed), La Carnita, Grand Electric and more. Marroquin isn’t threatened. “I don’t care what they do,” says the former accountant from Mexico City.
So he tests a second Rebozos location inside Kensington Market last summer. Then, when a former bar at 424 College St. becomes available, he signs a fiveyear lease and takes over the liquor licence.
He’s competing with Sneaky Dees and La Carnita.
Everything seems to be about $7, whether it’s a main course or an appetizer
“If those guys are more popular than me, I don’t mind,” says Marroquin.
Marroquin brings the original no-frills menu to College St. Taco fillings (three for $10) are better than at the original Rogers Rd. location.
The pork-shoulder carnitas are juicier and richer, the Miss Piggy of tacos: beautifully, loudly, unabashedly porky. The shredded chicken mole is even juicier, dripping with cumin-and-cinnamon liquid.
Only the cubed pork shoulder in cochinita pibil is so-so, its achiote seasoning restrained.
A whiteboard propped on a bar stool lists specials. Everything seems to be about $7, whether it’s a main course or an appetizer.
Courses don’t matter. The unpleasantly squishy tripe soup pancita ($8) may come before or after the chilaquiles ($7), a humble dish of corn tortillas simmered in green tomatillo sauce and topped with iceberg lettuce, mozzarella and lavish squiggles of Mexican sour cream. With refried beans, it’s a filling vegetarian dish.
The sole dessert remains homey tres leches cake ($4), a homemade sponge cake soaked with condensed, evaporated and regular milks. At the end of the month, he will start serving custardy flan.
Will Rebozos succeed on College St.? The room has zero style, its red walls hung with fake Aztec artifacts and tacky art.
But the food is cheap and simple and, in contrast to the hipster taquerias of 2012, there are no hour-long lineups. apataki@thestar.ca