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Column: Anepalco’s huitlacoche ice cream is homestyle magic

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When most of us dream of huitlacoche — that earthy purple corn fungus found seasonally in Mexican cooking — it’s smashed among ribbons of gooey Oaxacan cheese between the folds of a hand-patted, bruise-blue corn tortilla.

When Danny Godinez dreams of those same huitlacoche quesadillas — a staple on the street in Mexico City — he instead sees a dessert. This is how the brain of O.C.’s O.G. modern Mexican chef works, taking the French cooking traditions honed in a decade in fine-dining kitchens and using them to make molecular magic out of deconstructed homestyle dishes.

A new addition to the menu at his 4-year-old dinner spot on Chapman Ave. in Orange, is the huitlacoche ice cream — creative in all the ways for which Godinez is known: dark, funky ice cream melts atop a dense piece of sweet pan de elote sprinkled with crunchy caramel corn.

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Start here before going to El Mercado, his latest restaurant, which tours you through all of Mexico’s 31 states, Godinez-style.

Anepalco is at 3737 W Chapman Ave., Orange. For more information, call 714-456-9642 or visit anepalco.com.

SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.

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