January 3, 2011
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El Chisme
El Chisme moved into a Valley Junction building that most recently hosted Café Su after being doctors’ offices in previous decades. Jesus Ojeda’s café thus closes two circles, first by restoring Mexican cuisine to Valley Junction, the original base of Mexican immigration to Des Moines. Secondly, because Ojeda is a most ingenuous chef, his kitchen discipline derives, like medicine, from science as well as art. A little background.
Ojeda began in the restaurant business by designing and building a pushcart that maintained temperatures so efficiently that health inspectors used it as their model when they rewrote pushcart codes. After serving in the US Marine Corps, he graduated from culinary academy and worked on Don Yamaguchi’s line at Le Francais, a legendary French restaurant near Chicago. He saved money, bought a mobile taqueria and moved to Des Moines. He built a customer base here catering events like ArtFest and Latino festivals while working at Centro. Then he opened a Mexican-Italian hybrid restaurant in a strip mall on Merle Hay Road. There he built his Mexican menu around scratch, home made tortillas. His double tortilla tacos, burritos, quesadillas and enchiladas all use fresh homemade tortillas.
While making taco deliveries, Ojeda kept hearing people say “If you only delivered pizza as good as your tacos.” So, he tinkered with his tortilla machinery until he figured out how to make pizza pies. And because he loves working with dough, he expanded into home made pasta – not just cavatelli and ravioli either. Even El Chisme’s traditional pasta seca (lasagna, spaghetti, angel hair) are scratch made.
El Chisme is smartly remodeled. It still looks enough like Café Su that no fan will feel displaced. It looks just different enough to show that attention has been paid – a wall was altered and art work changed. Fresh flowers sat on tables and dinnerware was festive and hefty. Service had Marine Corps discipline – servers walked through the dining room but ran down a hallway to the kitchen.
Chips, made with unique tortillas imported from Chicago, were freshly fried and served with homemade salsa, guacamole or cheese.
Calamari, served with an excellent green salsa included whole baby squids. Hot wings and garlic bread were more traditional.
Pizza were better than ever. Thin crust pies are as fine an example of good New York style pizza in town. Crust was thin and crisp yet malleable enough to be folded in half. A close inspection revealed sear marks that resembled the pattern of a dry wall rasp, not a traditional pizza stone. Whatever Ojeda is using, he has ingenuously designed something that allows enough aeration of his crusts to keep them supple yet crisp.
Like everything at El Chisme, excellent Mexican ingredients (asada, baked chicken, cow’s head, chicharron, roast pork, tripe and tongue) and Italian ingredients (steak, shrimp, chicken, bacon, sausage) could be mixed or subbed. The full dinner menu was less ethnic than that served on Merle Hay Road. Multiple applications of chicharron were gone (except by special request) as were carnitas. Four kinds of fajitas, chicken enchiladas, and rib eye steak constituted the new entrée menu, all priced under $24.
Pasta are being phased on to the menu as Ojeda tinkers with new machinery. I tried angel hair thoroughly mixed with an orange colored marinara that was more Mexican than Italian. A house sauce that mixed marinara with cream had deeper flavors. Desserts featured freshly whipped cream and fresh fruits. A short wine list ranged $22 – $45, with many served by the glass.
El Chisme
225 Fifth St., West Des Moines, 255-5756
Tues. – Thurs. 5 p.m. – 10 p.m., Fri. – Sat. 4:30 p.m. – 11 p.m., Sun. brunch 10:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m., dinner 5 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Side Dishes
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