In Southern California last fall, I had a hankering for some Mexican food. But I wanted something more than just basic Mexican food and I wanted a place that had good margaritas - not the syrup/soda pop-infused margaritas that are prevalent at many Mexican restaurants. I did a quick look on line to see if there were any upscale Mexican restaurants that were close to my hotel and found a place in Irvine by the name of SOL Mexican Cocina.
Deb Schneider liked to cook growing up in Canada and she bought Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as a teenager in the early 70's. She took some culinary classes while living in Canada, but it took her some time to actually turn that into her life's vocation.
Schneider went to work at a Toronto publishing firm that specialized in focused magazines and souvenir booklets. She started out as a writer and copy editor while also designing covers for the magazines and booklets. Schneider worked her way up to the title of Executive Editor before she determined she wanted to do something else in her life.
Like most people in their 20's, Schneider really didn't have a plan or direction in life. She decided to go to Europe for an extended vacation around 1980. She hopped on a BMW motorcycle and toured France, Spain and Italy while also visiting the Canary Islands and Northern Africa. After 8 months of that, she found herself in Greece and while living in Athens she was hired as a chef by a company who owned a fleet of luxury cruise ships.
Pictured right - Deborah Schneider. Photo courtesy MexGrocer.com
After doing working for the Greek shipping company for a year, Schneider moved to Florida where she continued working as a yacht chef for a company out of Florida who ran private cruises in the Caribbean. After a few months of doing that, she decided to switch coasts and ended up in San Diego.
It was in San Diego where she met her future husband Barry. Barry loved to surf along the Baja California coast and he took his future wife to the beaches near Ensenada where Deb's life was forever changed the first time she had a grilled fish taco from a roadside stand. She had never had anything so fresh tasting and immediately fell in love with Baja California cuisine.
At her first professional job cooking in a kitchen, all the people working with her at the restaurant were of Mexican descent. She learned from her co-workers about different Mexican regional cuisines and picked up a lot of knowledge about the intricacies of different flavors and how they enhanced the foods that her co-workers enjoyed growing up.
And that continued on to restaurants in the San Diego area including La Gran Tapa - a Spanish tapas restaurant started by a retired Spanish toreador; Dobson's Bar & Restaurant - a fine dining restaurant founded 40 years ago by a retired American bullfighter (I'm seeing a pattern here); and the Grant Grill - an establishment that is celebrating its 73rd year in business this year. Schneider was the first female chef when she worked at the venerable restaurant in the early-to-mid 1990's. She quickly garnered a reputation as the best female chef in San Diego.
In 1998, Schneider was named the executive chef for the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines, a 4-star resort where Schneider was the first female executive chef within the Hilton hotel chain. It was during her time at Torrey Pines that she received her Certified Executive Chef ranking from the American Culinary Federation marking her trail-blazing accomplishments in San Diego kitchens.
After six years in La Jolla, Schneider was called upon to open Jsix, and upscale bar/restaurant in the new Hotel Solamar, a boutique hotel in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter. She was there helping get the restaurant established for a few months before moving onto become the Executive Chef at the Turf Club, a high-end members-only club at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club north of San Diego.
While at the Turf Club, Schneider wrote her first cookbook - "¡Baja! Cooking On the Edge" - a cookbook on Baja California cuisine with recipes she picked up during her travels to Baja California and from working with Baja California natives in kitchens around the greater San Diego area. Food & Wine Magazine called it one of the best cookbooks of 2006.
Schneider went on to write 7 more cookbooks focusing on Mexican cuisine. She has been nominated twice as a James Beard Award finalist for cookbook author of the year.
A couple years after "¡Baja! Cooking On the Edge" came out, Matt Baumayr was thumbing through the cookbook one day and was mesmerized by the recipes Deb Schneider had published. Baumayr and his buddy Rich Howland worked at restaurants together and - like Schneider's husband Barry - loved to go to Baja California to surf, eat at the roadside stands and to shop in the Mexican markets. Baumayr was taken by Schneider's book so much that he reached out to her to discuss something that Howland and he were working on for a restaurant concept.
Schneider was taken aback by Baumayr's enthusiasm as he told her of Howland and his idea of opening a Baja taco stand in Newport Beach, CA. But Schneider's recipes of Baja California cuisine were far and away past where Howland and Baumayr's knowledge and scope on the subject.
Apprehensive about working with a start-up restaurant as she saw many that quickly came and went during her career as a chef, Schneider met with Budmayr and Howland to discuss their ideas. The duo were more into the operations part of the restaurants they worked at, so getting Schneider to come on board was essential to their updated concept of a full service restaurant specializing in Baja California cuisine. The more the trio talked, but more Schneider could see this working out.
Pictured left - Rich Howland, Deb Schneider and Matt Budmayr. Photo courtesy El Restaurante.com
The problem was money. Howland and Budmayr had budgeted for a taco stand, but with Schneider suddenly on board they knew they were going to need a bigger and better place. The group turned to Mike Mastro whose family ran the Mastro's steakhouses to see if he would be interested in helping to fund the startup. Mastro was impressed with the business plan so much that he put up the capital needed to start SOL Cocina. In 2009, the trio opened SOL Mexican Cocina in the former Mama Gina's Italian restaurant on East Coast Highway in Newport Beach.
By 2019, SOL Mexican Cocina had a second location in Southern California in Playa Vista just north of Los Angeles International Airport, a location in Scottsdale, AZ, and a location in Denver. In the meantime, Schneider had opened a new Mexican taqueria/margarita bar concept called Solita with locations in Huntington Beach and Valencia. In late 2019, it was announced that Xperience Restaurant Group, the company behind Mexican restaurants such as El Torito and Chevys Fresh Mex, had purchased the SOL Concina and Solita's restaurants from Budmayr, Howland and Schneider.
Xperience Restaurant Group has expanded SOL Mexican Cocina to New York City, Las Vegas and a new one is slated to open in Boston this year. The Irvine location - the largest of the SOL Mexican Cocina restaurants - opened in March of 2022 in what was a former El Torito location.
It was about a five minute drive from my hotel to SOL Mexican Cocina at the corner of Main and Mercantile in Irvine (see map). It's part of a complex of commercial office space, a sports club and eateries. There was a pay garage next door to the restaurant and the restaurant will validate the ticket for free parking.
The restaurant was different from a lot of Mexican restaurants I've been to. It was what I would call elegant without any of the pretension. The contemporary decor gave the space a classy feel. The dining area had booths along the wall and tables with wooden half-back chairs were in the middle of the room. The lounge area was large and well-lit with a beautiful black-and-white tiled front to the bar and similar tiled floors. I sort of wanted to sit at the bar, but there wasn't a seat to be had. I decided to take my chances
Walking to my table with a hostess showing the way, I passed the kitchen area that was behind a glass partition. The grill was up front with meat and poultry cooking on top. There was a tortilla making machine along with ovens and more grills in the back. And it was a spotless kitchen. I thought to myself that if they were going to have the kitchen out in the open for all the world to see, it had better shine in there at all times.
After being seated and looking through the menu, my server - Eli (Elias) - came over to greet me. He was a burly, but handsome guy who had a laid back attitude. Eli called me "boss" or "big guy" all through the meal. He made me feel comfortable with his laid back demeanor. I ordered up a Cadillac margarita - Cazadores reposado tequila, Grand Marnier, lime juice & agave nectar, just like how I make them at home. But it wasn't cheap - a jumbo was $18 bucks. (The regular was $16, so I figured for two bucks more I'd go for the jumbo.) I made short work of the margarita and ended up getting a Dos Equis Ambar after that.
It wasn't long before someone else came out and dropped off a basket of chips and three different types of salsa. They were basically round tortilla chips with a seasoning on them. The three sauces - a salsa, a black bean molé, and a roasted tomatillo salsa verde - were all very good. In fact, I went through the salsa verde pretty quickly and asked Eli to bring me some more the next time he stopped by.
The menu was very interesting starting with the appetizers. They had a chorizo and mushroom queso dip with serrano peppers and scallions mixed in. There was a house-smoked salmon with chiles and lemons served with a chopped mango, onion, and cilantro salsa along with shredded lettuce on blue corn tortilla chips. Another appetizer that I almost got as a main entree was the grilled Spanish octopus in a white wine and olive oil drizzle with smoked paprika fingerling potatoes. You don't know how tough it was to not pull the trigger on that.
Some of the entrees included barbecued short ribs, shrimp-filled chile rellenos (my wife would have jumped on that), and chipotle-beef fajitas. They had a number of street tacos on the menu, as well as quesadillas and burritos. They also had a handful of specialty tacos served a la carte with black borracho beans and red Spanish rice. A number of the specialty tacos caught my eye - the short ribs with blue corn tortillas, the garlic ribeye tacos, and the fish taco. They served the fish taco with lettuce and cheese instead of cilantro, cabbage and onions, so I eliminated that.
I couldn't make up my mind between an entree item and something from the specialty taco page - so I got both! I ended up ordering the Chef's Special Chile Verde - pork chunks simmered in salsa verde, topped with cheese, onions, cilantro, and avocado slices. Black borracho beans and red Spanish rice came on the side. Rolled up corn tacos came with the meal.
The specialty taco I ordered was the CDMX Quesotaco. CDMX is the insignia for Mexico City and this was a Mexico City-style taco with carne asada, fried Oaxaca cheese, roasted poblano peppers in a cream sauce, with onions on a couple corn tortillas. A tequila-pickled jalapeño came on the side along with a chipotle chile salsa.
I couldn't even tell you which one was better. The pork chile verde was incredible in taste and I made a couple tacos out of the pork, beans and rice, topped with a chunk of avocado. They were messy, but outstanding in taste and freshness.
The CDMX specialty taco was equally outstanding in flavor. I chopped up some of the pickled jalapeño to put on the taco. The fried Oaxaca cheese was gooey on the inside and gave the taco another notch in taste that I'd never experienced. Fried cheese on a taco - who would've thunk it?!
But, man, it was a lot of food! And it was so good that I couldn't quit eating. Although I didn't finish everything that was brought out to me, I certainly made an impressive showing. Eli came back to my table and asked, "Everything good, boss?" I told him that everything was TOO good.
My first experience with a SOL Mexican Cocina was nothing less than top tier. For as elegant as the decor and atmosphere was in the restaurant, it was actually comfortable and relaxed. And that probably had a lot to do with my server Eli who was laid back, yet very efficient and friendly in his work that evening. And the food was exceptional. It was an interesting take on traditional Mexican foods that I've enjoyed over the years. Even though Sol Mexican Cocina is a chain, it's a specialty restaurant that allows each chef in charge of their individual locations to add a little signature to the food they prepare. (Photo courtesy Orange County Register.)
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