Agave

I have a new found appreciation for Mexican cuisine. Part of this can be attributed to Rick Bayless' win on Top Chef Masters. I have seen him on TV for years, and always found him pretentious and awkward, telling me to make recipes using ingredients I would never be able to find where I lived. I think Top Chef Masters is a much better medium for him than his own cooking show. I still found him pretentious, but in a thoughtful, academic way that was legitimately interesting, and rendered charming by his (at least appearance of) complete enthusiasm and sincerity. What major American chef admits on national TV that it took him twenty years to learn how to make one sauce? Charming. And, of course, my foray into Taco Truck cuisine in August contributed to my new appreciation. Fresh food with a beautiful complexity sounds like a recipe for yummy to me, and it is exactly what I learned good Mexican food should be.

So, I will admit that I went to Agave on Friday with a moderate expectation. It is, after all, a joint venture between the owner of Moxie, always a good standby for good pricey food, and the owner of DeLeon, whose name is legendary here on the Spokane food scene. Surely those two owners would be enough to overcome the odor of failure lingering from the previous tenants of the space, Blue Fish. I actually really liked Blue Fish for a couple of years, but the quality went down hill precipitously towards the end, and then they made things worse with that ill conceived asian bistro disaster.

I was wrong. Now, there is a lot to like at Agave. The service was prompt, professional, and friendly. Some of the food was outstanding; indeed, the smoked paprika grilled prawns rates as one of the best shrimp dishes I have ever had. Ever. It was spicy and smoky and grilled, the shrimp were tender but with a nice char, the salad underneath was fresh and well dressed, and it all came together in a harmonious, exciting dish. I ordered the mahi mahi tacos, where too the fish was perfectly cooked and wonderfully spiced. And my margarita a delight, with fresh citrus and clear tequila presence. Plus, it came in a glass the size of a chalice, which is not a bad thing.

So, what went wrong? Why was it that Jeremy and I both walked out feeling no desire to revisit Agave? Was it that the food wasn't consistently exiting? That was certainly the case. The rice was underseasoned and underflavored, as were the ranchero beans. Jeremy's wild boar chile verde was an awful lot of gammy funk with very little other flavor. The fresh fried chips were excellent, but the salsa bordered on having too much raw garlic. But the food wasn't really it. Even very good restaurants can have less successful dishes, and usually one dish as good as those prawns would be enough to bring me back.

I believe the entire problem with Agave is that they didn't de-Blue Fish enough. They didn't paint (I believe). They didn't remove, or apparently clean, the blue-lit fish tank in the entrance. They didn't rethink the awkward table floor plan. Blue Fish was a dated hipster doofus establishment when it opened, and the passing years have exacerbated the dated and the doofus part of the establishment, and Agave shouldn't be hipster anyway. Adding some Latin knickknacks and some of the ugliest curtains I have ever seen just isn't enough to give Agave it's own personality and vibe.

There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season four, when the misunderstood but psychotic Faith switches bodies with our hero Buffy. Badness ensues. That's what Agave feels like: like a good restaurant shoved into a completely different restaurant's body. It just isn't right. It's a shame, because I think Agave deserves better.

In the meantime, since the wild boar chile verde is a disappointment, here is a recipe for a Pork and Green Chile stew that, I think, makes up for it:

2-3 lbs trimmed pork butt or lean country style ribs, or some other fatty pork (you can do it with a lean pork, but the meat won't be as tender at the end), but into 1 to 2 inch chunks

6 poblano (also called pasillo) chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded and ribbed, and cut into 1 inch squares*

1 jalopeno, also roasted, peeled, seeded, ribbed, and chopped. *

6-10 tomatillos, roasted and chopped*

1 large onion, chopped

1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes

3 large garlic cloves, chopped

1 tbls dried oregano

1 tbls cumin

about 3 cups chicken broth (canned is okay)

flour, salt, pepper, oil

1) coat the meat in flour, salt and pepper, and fry in a couple of tbls of oil until the meat is well browned on all sides. Do in batches so as not to crowd your pan.

2) in the same pan, add a little more oil if needed, and saute onions until they are soft and browned. Then add everything else, including the meat. It should be quite a loose soup at this point. Simmer uncovered for about two hours, adding more stock if it looks like it is drying out. You know it's done when the meat is really tender and the sauce is thick.

3) Serve -- I like some grated cheddar and a little sour cream, but any of the usual chili toppings would be fine.

*Preparing these roasted ingredients is a little time consuming, but not difficult. I have a grill built into my stove, and I can get a good char all over the peppers in about ten minutes, but your could do this on a conventional grill, under a broiler or in a heavy duty skillet, or even over a gas burner using tongs. The only trick is to get the entire surface of the peppers charred, and then stick them in a bag until they are cool enough to handle. The charred skin will just rub off, and the you can open up the peppers and rinse out the seeds without losing flavor. The tomatillos just need to be softened up and browned a little bit, then chopped up.