Funny thing about Mexican restaurants in Texas. The newer they are, the more authentic they are. Case in point: Bright and cheery Café San Miguel, which recently opened on the east end of Dallas’s frantically hip Henderson Avenue strip, would pass muster in Oaxaca or Cuernavaca. Chef Fernando Marrufo’s codorniz en pipián is the meatiest quail I’ve had in a long time, its plump little breast bathed in an earthy sauce of ground pumpkin seeds and ancho chile. A south-of-the-border surf and turf—big, perfectly cooked shrimp and flavorful beef medallions—comes with a sauce of roasted garlic and lime juice fired up with habaneros. Of several scrumptious desserts, the headiest is tres leches, the milk-and-cream-drenched white cake that is sweeping dessert menus across the state. That’s a modern tradition I definitely approve of.
