Lately a great deal of what was once settled regarding the presence of Mexicans in the United States has become uncertain. Questions proliferate: Which immigration bill will pass? Will it be hard to get around that wall? And will the wall just end, or will it taper off in an elegant way? Just how does an illegal immigrant demonstrate she or he has been in the US for five years, so as to pay back taxes and get amnesty? Will Mexican immigrants continue to combine cheese, meat, rice, beans, tomatoes, and tortillas and sell it to the rest of us in large quantities and pretty cheap?
We don’t really have to worry about that last one. Of course they will. For simple reassurance amid the vast immigration uncertainty, visit South Portland’s newest restaurant for this cuisine, Hacienda Pancho Villa. The Hacienda has been getting a lot of good buzz lately, not least in these pages. (See "The Best Tribute to a Pioneering Revolutionary," April 7, and "Eats and Beats," by Shay Stewart-Bouley, May 3.) It certainly is worth a visit, though I think diners will find they are mostly reassured and only occasionally dazzled.
I have more or less consciously avoided eating Mexican food in Maine since moving here from California — the nation’s best place for this cuisine. Many places there, working with the same basic ingredients, manage to make things seem fresh, light, and inventive. Too many Maine spots offer some variety of Mexican chain food — prepared with a can opener by young, anhedonic Caucasian-New Englanders. They remind me of a horrible night in the early ’90s when I was left alone during my first night on the job preparing the late-night menu of a Chapel Hill place called “Tijuana Fats.”
The closest Maine has to a spot that offers Mexican in the California way is El Camino in Brunswick, which is run by folks who moved here from out west. They make a great mojito, and they keep the menu short and interesting.
Hacienda Pancho Villa thinks more margarita than mojito, and its menu goes on and on. They offer Mexican food done in the style people in the US have come to expect, but they do it better than most spots in Maine. Servings tend to be huge, and heavy on meat, refried beans, Spanish rice, salsa, and cheese. But the menu occasionally extends into territory most Maine Mexican joints don’t cover, and those ventures seem rewarding. The best thing we tried was probably the least typical — enchiladas chipotle. The sauce offered a really nice smoky heat, and the enchilada as a whole had a pleasant, creamy quality.
The table salsa was a little watery, but we admired its kick. Not so with the guacamole, which seemed to have been made with little or no lime or salt. It came on top of shredded lettuce that clung to the chips in an annoying way. The taco salad looked at first like a huge plate of this same lettuce, though underneath were nicely prepared tender strips of chicken. The pork in the “gringo” burrito chile verde did not have quite the tenderness you hope for when the meat stews long enough in green salsa, but the warm spice of the tomatillo sauce nonetheless made the dish really pleasant. A tortilla soup — often an indicator of a restaurant’s seriousness, much like the miso soup in Japanese cuisine, was quite good.
