Title: Jan. 15, 2014
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: Owner

El Gusano in Oakland, CA – update, dinner
Dinner menu: http://el-gusano.com/Menus/ElGusano_Dinner.pdf
Lunch menu: http://el-gusano.com/Menus/ElGusano_taqueria.pdf 
Review date: January 2014
(previous review appended below)

This schizophrenic restaurant is a counter-order taqueria by day, but a full service restaurant at night. It's noisy at any time, as at night the kitchen behind the counter is merely blocked off by bamboo roll-down blinds (so you can still hear the line cooks shouting at one another). Plus, the long narrow room is full of hard surfaces, including a less-than-delightful Mexican tiled floor that make all the tables wobble because the tiles bulge slightly upwards.

We tried the lunchtime taqueria on November 2013, but found it not quite up to the level of our fav, La Calaca Loca/Oakland. But the menu here is quite different at dinner. Carlos loves ceviche, and they offer three different choices at night. We decided to try an evening meal.

Although there's plenty of waitstaff at El Gusano, with lots of busboys, the waitress we had was somewhat less than skilled. She didn't write down our order, so she had to come back to confirm it after about ten minutes. It took her twenty minutes to tell me the dish I ordered wasn't available, well after we had received and finished not only most of the free chips and salsa, but our appetizer, the trio of different ceviches. 

As we were one of the first two tables in the restaurant upon opening, it was inexcusable that it took her so long to let us know this. As mentioned, the place is noisy, the chairs are uncomfortable, and to add poor service was just capping a bad experience.

All of this might have been tolerable if the food had been good, but it was as iffy as everything else. The three salsas they bring are quite good, more interesting than the ones Comal/Berkeley offered us. One is a habanero/roasted garlic/tomato/cream. One is the usual tomatillo/avocado. The other was a roasted chile dip, heavy with adobo and a bit sweet. The chips in the evening are sturdier than the chips in the daytime – go figure! Apparently the two restaurants don't even share the same tortilla chips.

The ceviches were weak and barely passable. Only the shrimp-mango was good, by way of being the freshest. The shrimp was chopped into miniscule pieces, but the mango was ripe and the balance of lime and red onion was just right. The salmon-avocado was mushy: the chile flavor was smoky and had good depth but it was sabotaged by inferior quality farmed salmon. The fish was even worse, so mushy it was more like loose fish paste than chunks of fish. Again, the taste wasn't bad, mostly just lime with a touch of heat, but the texture was off. Ceviches can't be held; the acid dissolves the proteins and it becomes a pasty mess. 

After the waitress told us my taco de cachete wasn't available, I asked about the pork chop, but discovered it takes a full 20 minutes. As my back was already protesting the chairs, I wasn't in the mood to hang around longer than we needed to. I picked the soup, sopa de tortilla, instead.

Even so, we ended up waiting another fifteen minutes before our entrées came out. This was odd, since not only had we been amongst the first diners to arrive, but our entrées merely needed to be thrown on the plate (or in the bowl). 

Carlos had ordered the chile verde, which comes with rice and beans. It's the usual Mexican rice, very soft and moist; beans (whole, refried, or black), and a very large scoop of braised pork. The pork was in a dark brown broth, not a verde, and tasted oddly closer to beef than pork.

My soup was nothing remarkable. It had a decent depth of flavor, nice chile heat, a good assortment of chopped vegetables but as often happens, way too many onions. The chicken was a mixture of white meat shreds and a few pieces of chopped dark meat.

Everything we ordered has to be made in advance, so we can't imagine what the delay was all about. The couple next to us came in well after we did, ate their meal (similar to ours), paid and left, before we got our entrées – yet they had the same waitress we did. I found this annoying, and the food wasn't good enough to overcome the negatives.

El Gusano wants to be closer to Cocina Poblana (reviewed way back in Oct 2008), an upscale, more authentic Mexican cuisine. But unlike Nido across Broadway, a restaurant that is genuinely authentic and interesting (reviewed April 2013), El Gusano doesn't quite have enough courage to break completely free of Americans' expectations of heaping plates with rice and beans. 

Gusano costs more than La Calaca Loca. Despite this, the ingredients aren't as high quality and El Gusano keeps falling into the "a good plate is a heaped-full plate" trap. El Gusano needs to figure out if it wants to be a Fonda (a bar with food), Cocina Poblana (upscale Mexican), Nido (small, casual, high quality authentic), or old style Cal-Mex platters El Torito-style.

All four types are good, depending on what kind of food you're hankering for. But a restaurant needs to pick a market segment and stick to it. The one-size-fits-all doesn't work any longer. El Gusano just hurts itself trying to attract everyone – especially with uneven food quality at these prices.

Two people, dinner: one starter (the most expensive one, the trio of ceviches), one soup, one entrée, with tip was $57.

El Gusano (Lunch)
1015 Clay St. @10^th St., Oakland, CA
www.elgusano.com
Review date: November 2013

This odd little fast food-by-day, full service-by-night restaurant was open today, so Carlos and I stopped in to try it for lunch. During the day it's a standard taqueria, but at night it's a full-service dinner restaurant with premium mezcal tequilas offered.

This is a good-sized space. At lunchtime you order at the beginning of the long counter that extends towards the back of the room. Paper menus are unfortunately in a basket at the front end of the counter, instead of being set out when you first walk in. You are handed a numbered stand; you pay, and find a table. Near the cashier there is a bewildering array of unmarked salsas to put into little plastic cups, and we can assure you that it's a nuisance to have to keep going to the back of the restaurant to get more salsa after they bring you a free basket of housemade tortilla chips. I realize they don't want you to waste salsa, but those little cups only hold 1/8 cup, which isn't much for dedicated salsa lovers.

The tortillas are thin, so the chips tend to be a little too brittle. But they're very tasty, especially with that lovely salsa verde El Gusano offers. It's not quite as hot as some places offer, but it's good stuff. Soft drinks are not immediately obvious, but are available. I opted for horchata, but the staff asks if you want it iced or not. I chose no ice, but their horchata is very sweet so it's better iced.

I picked the carne asada nachos, to compare them with my favorite version at La Calaca. El Gusano does an adequate but not great job on both the carne asada and the nachos. The beef is tender but unsalted, so it has little flavor. The thin, brittle chips quickly get soggy under a judicious but not generous amount of pico de gallo, refried beans and melted Jack shreds. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't bother ordering this again.

Carlos chose two quesadillas: a corn with carnitas, and a flour with chile verde. We had real difficulty getting the cashier to understand his order, which is odd as both types of tortillas are listed on the menu. Fortunately it all came out as ordered. 

The carnitas tasted more like a really fine al pastor, complete with a strong taste of pineapple and citrus. It was delicious, but not the carnitas with the crispy edges that we prefer. The chile verde was very good, but unfortunately Carlos didn't care for the type of cheese they use. Sometimes he'll tolerate Monterey Jack, but it's one of his least favorite cheeses. El Gusano uses a brand he doesn't care for. The flour tortillas are good, although not the flaky lard-based tortillas that La Calaca Loca, our fav, uses.

El Gusano's dinner menu is much more interesting than the ordinary taqueria items offered at lunch. We gave it a try, but at least for lunch, El Gusano is a "pass by" for us. La Calaca is better and no further by car. But we'll try El Gusano again for dinner, and see how it goes. Carlos loves ceviche, and they have three different kinds at dinner – assuming they're all available at the same time.

Two people, lunch: three mains, two beverages, with a couple of dollars left on the table, was $30.50.