Step Up to the Plate

The intriguing Habanero Blue rests in a gritty part of downtown, just north of the Astros’ new ballpark, where blue-collar sweat still hangs in the air. The owners have set up shop on a rough block of warehouses, some abandoned and some sparsely colonized by artists. The street is rutted and wide enough to accommodate the truckers who occasionally park their rigs there overnight to catch some shut-eye. The eatery, even with its lofty notions on Mexican cuisine, would seem a wonderful antidote to downtown’s increasingly prefabricated hipness that has been sanitized for our protection.

In the entryway of Habanero Blue, there are photos depicting the building’s humble beginnings as the Main Packing Co. The transformation is remarkable, from decrepit warehouse to warehouse chic, complete with track lighting, exposed air-conditioning ducts, bare plaster walls and large windows with a view of towering skyscrapers. Fittingly, the menu is equally ambitious: You’ll find interior-of-Mexico staples, such as chicken mole, and fusion dishes, such as the fillet of salmon in a mango-mint sauce. Even the restaurant’s take on the standard pre-meal basket of chips is different. On my first visit, the chips were simply baked corn tortillas, shaped chiplike but without a hint of grease. I’m okay with this, but I don’t see it going over well. I can just imagine the following exchange:

Enron executive: Excuse me, ma’am, but these chips are stale.

Waitress: Well, sir, they’re not exactly chips. They’re baked corn tortillas.

Enron executive: Come again?

Waitress: You see, this is a Mexican restaurant, and chips are, well, an American invention.

Enron executive: So are freedom and democracy. Now bring me something that crunches!

On a second visit, I was disappointed to find standard-issue chips. I thought this shift telling — the restaurant wants to push diners beyond their stereotypical notions of Mexican food, yet it still panders to mainstream sensibilities. (Habanero Blue still serves the baked corn tortillas on request; I guess I got lucky on the first visit.)

Take, for example, the chicken fajitas ($10.95), the lone Tex-Mex dish on the menu, which looked and tasted half-hearted. “Oh no,” my dinner companion exclaimed when the fajita platter exited the kitchen trailing a plume of smoke. Her instincts were dead-on — where there’s smoke, there’s grease. The chicken was serviceable, but it was swimming in oil. And the meager portion of fajitas was accompanied by just a few slivers of onion. Worse, the flour tortillas, although billed as fresh, tasted store-bought. Fortunately, like many dishes here, the fajitas came with refried beans, which were a revelation. (I had forgotten these things vary in quality.) They were creamy, panfried with potatoes and probably a good bit of lard, and layered with queso fresco, a crumbly, bitter white cheese. Don’t make the mistake of saving the beans for last and lumping them in a tortilla with picked-over food.

The restaurant really shines when it sticks to its central-Mexico roots. For starters, try the agua fresca ($2.25). In Mexico, there are many flavors of agua fresca, which is made by mashing fruit into a pulp and soaking it in sugar water. Habanero Blue serves only an agua fresca de melon, which has cantaloupe bits floating in it. It’s sweet and addictive; I had anywhere from eight to 84 glasses. The menu says you’re limited to one free refill, but I wasn’t, nor was a friend who ate there at lunch.

On the appetizers list, the crab empanadas ($7.95) are the stuff of fevered cravings. They’re made of cornmeal fried into a pastry shell and filled with lumps of smoky-flavored crabmeat. They’re topped with crema, which is sour cream, but thicker and richer than the American version. By contrast, the cheese and chorizo jalapeños ($5.95) are the stuff of remorse. The jalapeños were fried in an egg batter and crammed with too much Monterey Jack. They were sadistically hot, almost wholly lacking in flavor, and they oozed orange grease when I cut into them.

The highlight of my two trips was the poblano chili stuffed with roast beef ($9.95). The meat was cooked to perfection: I could cut it easily with a fork. It was tangy, as if it had been braised in red wine, lightly salted and layered with a light coating of crema. I’m not a fan of poblanos — they often seem bland and rubbery — but this one was fire-roasted to a succulent deep green.

One rung below is the chicken mole ($9.95). I was expecting the classic dark brown, cocoa-spiked mole, but this one was bright red and spicy, amped up by habaneros, I’m guessing. It was also sweet, thanks to the plantains that are cooked into the sauce. The chicken breast was huge, but luckily there was mole left over, which I sopped up with the excellent poblano mashed potatoes.

We also had a delicious pork torta ($8.95), which is typically served on a bolillo roll (similar to a baguette), slathered with refried beans, avocado and crema and filled with some type of meat. Habanero Blue’s upscale version is slightly less indulgent. The pork, roasted and pulled into meaty strings, was heaped onto sourdough bread with grilled onions, lettuce, tomato, habanero mayonnaise and a massive slice of Gouda. My only complaint: The bread was a little oppressive; I prefer a traditional torta, in which the bolillo is gutted so that it’s not so doughy.

To balance things out, I tried a hybrid dish: the grilled seafood salad with lemongrass vinaigrette ($10.95). The menu advertises it as “totally awesome,” but it totally wasn’t. It offered generous helpings of charbroiled shrimp and scallops, but they were limp and bland. Ditto the saggy roasted cactus and boring clumps of iceberg lettuce. And the dressing didn’t pack nearly enough kick to jump-start this dish.

When we asked about dessert, the waiter said he wasn’t sure they had anything in stock. His response was met with the sort of concern most people save for exploratory surgery. He must have picked up on it, because he disappeared into the kitchen and materialized with a churro ($5.25), twisted strips of fried dough dipped in sugar and cinnamon. It was served beautifully with strawberries, blueberries, caramel sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Excellent. Better yet, it was on the house. (Interestingly enough, Habanero Blue also serves a New York cheesecake, at the same price as the churro.) Which brings me to the service. It was incredibly attentive, almost fawning, which may owe to the fact that the restaurant hasn’t exactly caught on. The first night we dined there, a Thursday, we were the only customers seated at a table; for our next meal, on a Saturday, there were maybe two other tables occupied. That should change come opening day.

Make no mistake, Habanero Blue also has a not-so-secret ally in Enron Field, the retractable-roof wonder that should inspire plenty of Astros fans to file through the neighborhood (if only to look for a parking spot). If they dare to linger at Habanero Blue for more than a basket of chips, they’ll find that this restaurant is a bit like the ball team they follow: ambitious, but not quite ready for the championship game.