Chile rellenos, golden brown outside, bursting with beans,
shredded pork, and queso fresco, and slathered in salsa roja. Consomme-clear
chicken broth garnished with bits of fried tortillas, avocado, and a dusting of
queso fresco. Frijoles — refried beans — a deceptively mundane-looking study in
brown, stoked with garlic and just enough chipotle pepper to make you sit up
and take notice. A cup of salsa verde, cool and green tasting, dolled up with a
mixture of pickled jalapenos and garlic and transformed into a spicy powerhouse
of flavor. And regular unleaded gasoline, with 10 percent ethanol, at $3.77 a
gallon as of press time.

Here in the prim and proper north, the idea of gas-station
cuisine long ago became the province of the roller dog, the Slurpee machine,
and snacks that ought to bear a warning from the American Heart Association.
The idea that you can get good — even great — food at a gas station seems
almost ludicrous. But nonetheless, it’s true. Some of the best and cheapest
Mexican food you’ll find in our area is made in a kitchen at the back of an
Arrowmart gas station in Chili.

According to owner Jose Abarca, his family’s decision
to open Itacate in a gas station was, in part, a matter of economics and risk —
the overhead in opening in such humble digs was attractively low. But another,
and perhaps more important, consideration was the atmosphere that Abarca, his
wife, Lourdes, brother David (who manages day-to-day operations at the
restaurant), and step-son Jose Reyes wanted for their restaurant. They aspired
to introduce Rochester to fondas — small, informal, family-run restaurants
serving home-cooked food from a limited menu at bargain prices.

Unlike typical Mexican restaurants in which the food has been
altered to suit American tastes — long on fat and cheese, with spice as a
unidimensional blast of heat rather than a subtle complement to a dish — Itacate’s
food is simple and healthy. It’s a menu that Abarca says is composed of the
“things that we eat in our kitchens every day. It’s my mother’s chile rellenos.
It’s my wife’s recipe for the frijoles and the bean soup. It’s stuff that you
can eat every day that won’t kill you with cholesterol.”

That’s not to say that the food at Itacate is in any way
bland or uninteresting; quite the opposite is true. The Abarcas make everything
but the tortillas from scratch (although David Abarca told me that they did briefly
experiment with pressing their own corn tortillas when the restaurant first
opened), and coax every bit of flavor out of every ingredient. The results are
sublime.

Take the bean soup, for instance. It’s just pinto beans,
bacon, onion, garlic, some cumin, and a handful of other spices. But because
Lourdes Abarca sweats the bacon and the onions until the fat renders out of the
meat and the onions almost caramelize, adding the spices and garlic at just the
right moment to release their flavors but not burn them, she gets an intensely
flavorful base for her deep brown soup — one that can make you believe that she
started with an incredible stock rather than, as she maintains, mere water. The
soup is full of a mother’s love and almost unbelievably rich (a small cup with
a couple of tortillas could probably sustain you for a whole afternoon of hard
work), packed with tender beans and melting chunks of bacon, each element part
of a glorious harmony. Add a handful of pickled jalapenos to zip things up, and
you could probably eat this every day and never tire of it.

In addition to soup, Itacate offers a simple menu of
burritos, tacos, and chile rellenos and tamales (depending on the season and
the mood of the cook). Tacos and burritos are stuffed with your choice of
fillings, including black or pinto beans, red or green salsa (I always go for
the green), pico de gallo, lettuce, cilantro, jalapenos, crema, real queso
fresco, and a host of other toppings. You can have any or all of them, the menu
tells you, “as much as tu quieras (as long as it fits in the tortilla).” That
last bit is a fair warning: on two visits the medium burritos I ordered were
packed so full of meat, beans, and other condiments that the flour tortillas
could barely contain them. Usually halfway through I found myself removing the
tight aluminum-foil wrapper and attacking the saucy, exploded remains with a
fork.

Tacos were similarly loaded, the tiny corn tortillas heaped
with meat and lettuce, topped with salsa and crema. Picking them up and eating
them quickly was imperative, if I wanted to pick them up at all.

The star of the show, though, is the meat that the Abarcas
put in their various dishes. There is excellent grilled chicken and beef,
nicely charred but still juicy and tender. But it’s the braised meats that
really stand out. Pork shoulder slow-cooked in guajillo peppers and spices,
luxuriating in a brick-red broth, nearly provoked me to grab a straw and drink
from the pan. Tender, mild-looking shredded beef was packed with spicy goodness
— perfect with a little squeeze of lime and a fresh tortilla cooked, not just
heated up, on the kitchen’s flat top. Even Itacate’s carnitas (roasted pork) is
worthy of high praise, benefitting from a masterful hand with the spices and
the application of heat, the meat tender and pleasantly porky under its dry rub
of cumin and chilis.

A final word on location: Itacate is not easy to find, and
you aren’t likely to stumble on it casually. My advice is to plug the address
into your GPS, run your gas tank nearly dry, and look out for the small sign in
front of a nondescript gas station at the corner of Buffalo Road and West Side
Drive. You’ll be glad you made the trip.

This article appears in Feb 29 – Mar 6, 2012.