DineOut

Of Red Onions and Avocado Cheesecake
The Latina fusion of Café Red Onion excels when it’s at its oddest
by E.J. Arnell

One of the greatest aspects to doing this monthly column is meeting the chefs and hearing their stories. I love to ask what inspired them to create their signature food. The owner of Café Red Onion, Rafel Gallindo, is such a generous man, that I don’t think that he will mind if I share some of his stories with you.

He was raised in Honduras in a family where both parents cooked. His father, Rafel, liked to use exotic ingredients–iguana, turtle, conch–and was always creating wonderful sauces. His mother, Leonor, made a salad with red onions that was famed for increasing her husband’s virility. These and many other kitchen experiences stayed with Gallindo and were a catalyst for his success.

After spending 16 years working in hotel kitchens in Chicago, Gallindo moved to Houston and opened a catering business that serviced mostly business lunches. Regular customers started asking for a full-time restaurant. In 1995, Gallindo catered for the entire film crew of the Paramount movie The Evening Star, with Shirley MacLaine. For a year, Gallindo supplied food to this very particular group of people and changed many of his recipes to suit their "California mentality," making them healthier and more varied. Building on the love of cooking his parents had taught him to love, the positive experience with the film crew gave Gallindo the confidence, inspiration, and many new recipes to open the restaurant on Kirby.

With fond memories of his mother’s salad, Gallindo chose the name Café Red Onion. Hanging in the front windows are two gorgeous stained-glass red onions; during the day the light from outside shines through them and at night the restaurant’s glow illuminates the purple and red works of art.

Gallindo uses ingredients mostly found in South American and Mexican cuisines–but his presentation is North American. All the food is pretty. He is a master at combining textures, colors, and ingredients; the beautiful dishes aspire to food art (and can be a trifle challenging to eat gracefully).

You can order the familiar Mexican quesadillas, tacos, and enchiladas, but you’d do better to adventure into the unknown with Red Onion’s House Specialties. This is where the goods lie. I highly recommend the medallion de beef Colombia, a filet mignon first coasted in ground coffee and then grilled and served with mango BBQ sauce, grilled yellow and green zucchini, fried plantains, lightly battered onion rings, sour cream, and a sprinkle of fresh cilantro. The combination of all these flavors is fantastic. The sweetness of the plantains works well alongside the richly flavored beef, and the onion rings are an added bonus.

A popular dish, which I call the castle of food, is the Chicken Brazil, a gorgeous stack of eggplant, chicken, tomato, and cheese topped by a rolled salad (speared with a knife) and scattered red tortilla strips. The grilled chicken breast is first marinated in beer, jalapeno, and honey. A cool tomato basil sauce encircles the castle of food like a moat. The cheese on the top and bottom layers bakes to a crunchy crisp. In this South American version of mousakka, thank goodness for the fresh baby greens wrapped with a cucumber slice, because it is deadly rich.

Also within the category of House Specialties is the Southwest snapper. Hidden under a pile of red tortilla strips is a lightly floured pan-fried fillet that sits on the in-house queso, and is served with a delicious combination of white rice, black beans, corn, red pepper, and cilantro. This dish looks beautiful and is tasty and healthy, but difficult to eat. It’s a search-and-destroy mission worthy of the effort.

Gallindo excels at creation, and his weekly specials and the above-mentioned section of House Specialties are examples of his far-reaching imagination in culinary art. If any of the following dishes are available when you visit, do try them: seafood enchiladas, Cuban pork tenderloin, salmon bonifacio, and chicken triple quesadillas. Otherwise, go for what sounds good to you and I’m confident that it will be. The complimentary tortilla chips that come with tomato and pineapple salsas are plenty to start with, but you may find it hard to resist ordering an appetizer anyway.

The shrimp ceviché is a great way to begin a meal. Unlike your typical Peruvian ceviché, it is presented more like an Italian antipasti plate with cubes of Mexican feta cheese, black olives, slices of avocado, greens, and lime-marinated shrimp. With all of these ingredients, you can have a lot of fun building different taste combinations.

A bowl of gazpacho makes for another cool beginning, and the temperature allows you time to admire the presentation of the food art. Shrimp, cheese, and olives are skewered and laid across the tomato concoction along with a wedge of ripe avocado. Sweet plum tomatoes are infused with vinegar and combined with crispy tortilla strips that add texture as they fall into the soup and soften as you eat.

The hot soups are also great, and the empanadas are a fun starter, although the yucca frita with pork tenderloin was a bit disappointing. (I hasten to add that the yucca and pork was the only item I found I didn’t like.)

As for the desserts, they are a pleasant surprise. The trés leche Centro America is less sweet than most and is a fine offering, but my favorites are the baked cheesecakes. It may sound odd but the avocado cheesecake is amazing. Perhaps I’m amazed mostly by the fact that someone had the inclination to put this fruit into a dessert; but, probably because of the natural richness of an avocado, it works. If you’re not feeling that brave, then stick with the banana Oreo cookie cheesecake, which tastes just like it sounds.

I’m getting tired of saying order with restraint because of the Texas-sized portions, but that’s the way it is in the South. I hate seeing half-eaten plates of food heading back to the kitchen only to have the contents dumped into the garbage. Share with friends and order your main course after you have already eaten your appetizer and spied your neighbor’s. This way, you’ll know how much room you have left and how big the portions are–if all else fails, take your leftovers home.

Café Red Onion
3910 Kirby
713/807-1122
Hours are Monday—Thursday 11a.m.—10 p.m., Friday & Saturday, 11a.m.—11p.m.

Hey Readers!

Are you holding onto a secret but are willing to share? Write to me at OutSmart if you have any restaurant suggestions for the column, old or new–I want to hear from you! E-mail me at Todinefor@outsmartmagazine.com or mail to 3406 Audubon Place, Houston, TX 77006. –E.J. Arnell