A few months ago we noticed a new restaurant opening on El Cajon Boulevard. You really couldn’t miss the colorful paint and signs. And finally this past weekend we made our way to El Borrego Restaurant.
And the clean and bright interior was just as colorful as the exterior.
As were brought our menus, a smiling (and very tall) Young Lady came over to our table, and welcomed us. She also asked us "Do you like lamb?" When we answered with a very positive "yes", she said, "Then I think you’ll like us!" She then proceeded to go over the one page menu, that featured, what else? Lamb! The Young Lady whose name was Rodnia explained that Borrego style Barbacoa was the specialty of the house. She explained that the standard Barbacoa was lamb steamed in a "vaporera". We placed our orders and soon enough our Tamarindo and Horchata arrived along with the "condiments" for our order:
The condiments were accompanied by a salsa verde, and a red salsa. Rodnia also gave us a taste of the Lamb Broth:
A nice and hearty dark brown broth, full of flavor. Strips of Barbacoa, garbanzo beans, and rice dotted the consomme’. With a squeeze of lime this was very tasty, and really made us look forward to our food which arrived in a few minutes.
First to arrive was the Mixiote($10).
This seemed to be a seasoned Lamb Leg wrapped in a parchment like paper (papel de mixiote?). We stripped off pieces of lamb and proceeded to make tacos with the fresh tortillas and condiments.
First off, we noticed that every table used the salt shaker provided and took this to be the "norm". The salt was needed because, though the lamb was rubbed with seasoning, the meat didn’t seem to have been salted. As good as the Mixiote looked, we both thought that the "rub" took away all the "wildness" from the lamb. I also found out that the salsa verde had quite a bit of "zip" to it.
We also ordered a half pound of Barbacoa($9).
Now with a touch of salt, these made wonderful tacos. The combination of flavors and textures that the onion, cilantro, tortilla, and lamb provided made for a very rich and tasty taco. I showed extreme restraint by only eating 6 of these.
We enjoyed our meal enough to ensure that we’ll be back. The only item we really didn’t care much for were the tortillas, very mushy and bland, but at least they were fresh.
The people at El Borrego were very nice and friendly, they seemed intent on making sure that we enjoyed meal, and obviously took great pride in the food they served, shown by the amount of time they took in explaining each dish in detail(Of course we kind of stood out). In this day and age when it seems that many restaurants just want to serve you food, really not caring how you enjoyed it, and then get you out the door, the amount of pride that Rodnia and the others at El Borrego have in what they serve was refreshing. I think I’ll have a large bowl of the Lamb Soup($3.75), and a Nopal Salad($1.50) next time, along with the barbacoa of course.
El Borrego Restaurant
4280 El Cajon Boulevard
San Diego, CA 92115