By Chrissy Iley
Last night I was invited to a five-course tasting dinner at new restaurant Maradentro accompanied by a Casamigos flight and Casamigos cocktail. It’s true that tequila will probably get me to do anything. Some people go wild on it. I just feel alive. I love the taste of it so I was spectacularly pleased when the opening cocktail was Casamigos Tequila with pineapple and star anise. There’s something about tequila and pineapple that is the most blissful combination. There is something about Casamigos tequila that’s blissful – for a start it’s the George Clooney brand. I saw him the other night in Soho House, West Hollywood. His charisma always fills a room. I love him as an actor because you can always see what he is thinking when you look at his face and you see a man of taste, hence a tequila brand.
Already feeling quite buzzy with the tequila cocktail, we were offered Casamigos Blanco – pristine and citrusy to go with our first course Maradentro house salad. The tequila shot was accompanied by a pale pineapple cayenne juice. I’m not if it was this combo that made things feel heavenly but I have never tasted a better salad. I’m not really a salad person. I don’t like things cold or green or boring. Butter lettuce, goat feta cheese, sweet 100 tomatoes, which were divine, spicy pistachios, pomegrante seeds, a pistachio avocado dressing and cotija pesto crostini. This salad was so comforting as well as refreshing, I loved it’s freshness: a little twist of the spicy pistachios and the overall creamy feeling – but it was an avocado creamy, not a heavy creamy.
When the next course of ajillo shrimp toast came – Mexican sweet shrimp, chilli d’arbol garlic butter and ciabatta – I knew the chef was something special. There it was: an ability to take traditional Mexican flavours, make them modern, clean and with irresistible pairings. With this we had a Casamigos reposado. The reposado is aged for seven months and it has a slightly oaky flavour and a smell that hints at caramel. Warm and smooth. How I like those two words together.
At this point co-owner and chef Jose Acevedo appeared. He seemed surprisingly shy for a chef of such acclaim. He trained in the kitchens of Wolfgang Puck and then with a long-time friend Jesse Gomez formed an incredible partnership. Gomez is on the scene too. Handsome, vibrant, still in his early thirties, he has his own empire. He grew up in the restaurant business, so maybe he was always destined for this.
Jesse and Jose’s first restaurant was Yxta Cocina Mexicana in the emerging district of Downtown Los Angeles which was soon to become a food capital of the USA. After this they created Mercado, there are now three of them in LA – inventive menu, artisan cocktails, interiors with lots of skulls and Mexican art. I tell him I want to go the one on Third Street tomorrow. He smiles as he answers his cell phone where he has a report that Britney Spears is there tonight.
This is the first Maradentro – with its theme of Mexican fish dishes but there will be soon another.
The next course was a filet mignon taco with Casamigos anejo. This was is golden, caramelly with vanilla notes and it pairs rather well with the seafood soup – Chile relleno de siete mares. There’s a welcoming tomato chilli broth filled with shrimp, scallops, mussels, white fish, clams, calamari.
Another cocktail magically appears. Drinks are lined up everywhere. The whole restaurant is alive. The finale is a Mexican bread pudding: churro ice-cream. It’s called capirotada. The churro ice-cream is unimaginably glorious, the caramelly sauce seeps into the pudding in a really cool way. I like the warm and the cold, the comfort and the cream.
It was all crazy good and no surprise that this restauranteur duo totally rule.
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Maradentro
11929 Ventura Boulevard
Studio City
CA 91604
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