♣

(Update: This restaurant has CLOSED)

Mexican food undergoes an evolution in a neighborhood that is itself evolving.

♣

We recently had breakfast at Cantina 1910.  We’d had dinner there on a number of occasions; they have really good, inventive, interesting food. We were curious about breakfast and about the café service they offer during the day. Here’s our review.

What We Had for Breakfast:

Breakfast Burrito – pork chorizo and egg scramble, black beans, Chihuahua style cheese, seasonal greens, tomato. Larger than we expected. Very good. Served with a thick, puréed hot sauce that we had to either use in small quantities so that it didn’t overpower the flavors in the burrito, or use lavishly – which was kind of nice, because it was delicious, and kind of not nice because then the burrito tasted like nothing but the albeit tasty hot sauce. $9

Torta Mexicana – Cantina 1910 cured pork belly and ham, Chihuahua style cheese, apples, onions, sprouts, lettuce, guacamole. Stunning. So flavorful. This is a lunch item, but we convinced them to serve it to us for breakfast. $13

House Coffee – 12 oz. Very good coffee. Light blend. Excellent with cream and sugar. $3

Seedling Farm Apple Cider – typically served cold, but we had it served hot. What you’d expect. $4

What We Had for Dessert:

Breakfast dessert? Hell yes. Who says you can’t follow breakfast with dessert? Anyone who does will be happy to know that I don’t always follow breakfast with dessert. But they’ll be dismayed to find out that sometimes I simply skip right to the dessert, and have it for breakfast. Oh, don’t judge me! Next time you have a doughnut for (or with, or after) breakfast, ask yourself if it really matters that that doughnut isn’t a slice of pie. The desserts were phenomenal, by the way, and I’ll bet you if you ordered them after dinner, they’d cost twice as much. So not only did we have “bressert,” we paid less for it!

Cake Square – chocolate flan. Two layers of spongy chocolate cake, with a thick layer of caramel flan in between. Out of this world. I can make a cake like this in two layers, but I don’t know how to make it in three. $3

Magdalena – citrus cake. A very large frosted cupcake. The citrus flavor was subtle. The frosting was incredibly light. Incredibly. And that made it beautiful, because it kept the huge thing from being too heavy. $3

La Concha – stuffed sweet bread with a crunchy topping. We’ve never seen the like. How to describe it? What they call sweet bread is more like a cross between the crumb of a cake-style and a raised doughnut. Not dense, but rich. The crunchy topping was like a glaze, but it lent chewiness to the “bread.” It was stuffed with Bavarian cream that seemed very much like tres leches. $5

The Verdict:

Andersonvillains hate their neighborhood’s continuing evolution; this cantina has become their gripe touchstone. But like the invasion of Normandy, you can’t stop it. Urban pioneers step in to low-rent neighborhoods, fix them up, displace the indigenous population, and no one complains, because poor folk don’t write Yelp reviews. In turn, the pioneers are displaced by people wealthier than they are. Yes, the 1% eventually takes everything from us, including our cool neighborhoods, but don’t blame Cantina 1910. Your beef is with unrestrained capitalism.

At breakfast time, this place is less controversial than it is at dinner. The things that people complain about are generally not present at breakfast. We weren’t shocked by the prices, and our portion sizes seemed ample. It wasn’t noisy, because hardly anyone was there on a weekday late-morning. Anyone who says the food isn’t stellar, or even that it’s hit and miss, either came with disadvantageous expectations, or is clueless. This isn’t a “Mexican restaurant” – although the breakfast menu leans more that way than does dinner. The servers are handsome and generally friendly, but they’re not as professional as the food is fantastic or the place is gorgeous. So there is that … but it hardly ruined breakfast. (4 / 5)

(If on food alone, a solid five.)

Breakfast at Cantina 1910

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! Clicking on images will enlarge them. This content was not solicited, nor written in exchange for anything. Cantina 1910 did not invite me to write this post, nor did they comp my food. They don’t even know I was there unless they’re reading it here, now, like you are.

Keep up with us on Bloglovin’