The 25 Best Restaurants in Austin Right Now
by Brett Anderson
El Naranjo’s story — from food truck to brick-and-mortar restaurant to its current incarnation inside a slick, window-lined space on South Lamar Boulevard — mirrors that of Austin’s restaurant scene over the past dozen years. But the restaurant’s roots are in Mexico. Iliana de la Vega and Ernesto Terrealba opened the first El Naranjo in Oaxaca City in 1997, and the Austin restaurant’s food, now overseen by their daughter Ana Torrealba, still reflect those origins. The daily-changing ceviches, huitlacoche-queso empanadas and blistered octopus will make you fall in love with the cooking. But it would be a mistake to miss the moles: the dark, raspy, 30-plus ingredient mole negro; or the nutty, relatively lean mole blanco, sparked with a drizzle of habanero oil. Either pairs well with a refreshing mezcal cocktail.
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Photo by Tanya Chávez