When it was party time in San Juan Pilcaya, Maria Moso was the village’s go-to for pipián verde.
About two years ago, Maria, Anay, Daniel, and his stepfather Fernando started a small catering business, making quesadillas and pambazos on a parillada, a portable gas- powered grill. Pambazos, the guajillo-drenched potato-and-chorizo sandwiches, are a specialty of Mexico City (where Fernando is from). The business flourished for over a year and half. Then the family decided to open a brick-and-mortar spot focusing on the food from their home, which in 2017 achieved a bitter notoriety as the epicenter of an earthquake that took most of the town’s buildings.
Corn haunts you like a ghost in the days after you’ve eaten at El Sabor Poblano. The memory of the tortillas will intrude on your thoughts, whether you’ve swiped them through a pool of seven-chile mole poblano, or used them to rip chunks of barbacoa off the bone, the sweetly fragrant goat meat perfumed with the avocado leaves from home that it’s steamed with. It also inhabits the deeply flavored consommé made from the same goat meat, thickened with rice and chickpeas.
7027 N. Clark 773-516-4243 Cash only
