On a third visit, I found the chicken tinga tacos equally impressive, the chicken moist and smoky from a braise of chipotle peppers in adobo, the soft shreds of meat topped with sweet, crunchy pepitas. The toasted pumpkin seeds were a departure from the standard cilantro y cebollo you'd see on a street taco like this, and a pleasant one. Those same clever, modern touches are also in dishes like the tamales al chipotle, where a dusky chipotle sauce under those warm tamales elevates the old standard in a way that both considers the provenance of the food and pushes it forward along a similar, enlightened path. They're thoughtful additions that enhance the food, and are never avant-garde purely for the sake of it.
I love the direction of this modern Tex-Mex movement in Houston, also seen at places like Xuco Xicana, and the fact that El Gran Malo is so gloriously understated in their interpretation of it. Prices are reasonable here, the restaurant is welcoming, the service relaxed and friendly. Menus are crumpled into silver containers on the tables along with silverware, the tables surrounded by charmingly mismatched chairs.
Troy Fields
The tacos and margaritas are full of clever, modern touches.
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Despite the casual vibe, you will pay a little more for your tacos here than you would at Tacos Tierra Caliente, but they're made with better ingredients and in more inventive combinations than you'll find elsewhere. Plus, the more serrano-marinated red snapper tacos you order at once, the cheaper they are: One taco is $3.95, but you can mix-and-match five for $16.95.
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By the time I made my last visit to El Gran Malo, the place had started to feel like an old friend.
I started seeing familiar faces behind the bar — former Voice sommelier Todd Leveritt is there some nights, creating masterful concoctions like that addictive tomatillo-and-beef-jerky-tequila Bloody Maria — and I had already ticked off most of the tequila infusions on my list. I was pleased to see that in addition to the mural being nearly completed, another piece of local painter Kevin Hernandez's artwork was hung, too: a shrewd send-up of Magritte's The Son of Man, with a sombrero in place of a bowler hat and a lime in place of an apple.
Older couples from the neighborhood were enjoying dinner in the main dining room, which is barely recognizable from its days as Heights West save the icehouse-style doors that are permanently rolled closed. Young hipsters clustered at the dark bar, the bottles of booze lit by colorful LED strips that co-owner Lea McKinney installed herself. The patio had been enlarged and was decorated with papel picado and fairy lights, inviting if it weren't so cold outside. Although it had only been four months since it opened, El Gran Malo already seemed to have settled into its skin.
My girlfriends and I eagerly tore into the menu, ordering nearly every small bite all at once and the night's special, flautas. I'm sure that El Gran Malo gets more than a few complaints that its chips and salsa are $4.95, but the salsas are almost worth the price, especially the Chuy's-esque jalapeño-ranch dip that no sane person can resist. Besides, when the rest of the food is this good, you don't want to spend all your stomach space on chips and salsa.
We eagerly gobbled up empanadas filled with plantains, black beans, poblano peppers and stretchy, melty layers of cotija cheese, dipping the lightly charred flour tortillas into a bright, tangy tomatillo salsa. We fought over the beautifully plated chicken-filled tamales whose masa was far too thick, but also too velvety smooth for me to complain too much. And while my friends enjoyed a plate of diablos al caballo — goat cheese-and-gorgonzola-stuffed jalapeños — the smoky bacon wrapper and sweet melon sauce on the pepper I picked off the plate couldn't extinguish the astonishing amount of heat coming off the little white seeds inside. I'd somehow gotten the super-heated one of the bunch, but enjoyed it regardless.
We even appreciated the decent ceviche that — while not perfect — was a vast improvement over the version I had on my first visit. The fish was now a bit too marinated, but the bright, nose-clearing smashes of serrano peppers and aji amarillo were almost good enough to make up for the slightly mushy fish.
At the beginning of dinner, I'd shaken off the cold with a Dark & Earthy, El Gran Malo's twist on a Dark & Stormy using beet-infused tequila in place of dark rum.
"We ran out of the red beet-infused tequila," the bartender told me when I'd ordered it. A grin crossed my face as it dawned on me that other people were enjoying the beet-infused tequila as much as I had been, the softness of the root vegetables entirely canceling out any harshness of the spirit and instead enhancing the agave's own natural sweetness. "We only have golden beet left." Which was equally fine with me, and made for a stunning, topaz-colored cocktail whose gentle color belied the kick from the ginger beer inside.
By dinner's end, I was nursing a white sangria for dessert, fat blueberries floating on top as I considered the exceptional range of both El Gran Malo's kitchen and bar, both divey and endlessly, effortlessly creative at the same time. "It's like eating dinner at Grand Prize," noted one of my friends. "If Grand Prize had awesome food."
