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Friday, October 26, 2001

By Woodene Merriman Post-Gazette Dining Critic

For appetites whetted by enchiladas, burritos and tacos, Fajita Grill in Shadyside offers a step up the scale in Mexican food.

Rhianna Lehman, a waitress at the Fajita Grill, shows off the coconut rum flan with raspberry, chocolate and crème anglaise. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette)

Head cook Meritha Nevisi, who was born in Mexico City, specializes in Mexican-style family cooking. She follows regional recipes, imports authentic ingredients and is constantly introducing new dishes.

So the menu today at Fajita Grill is quite different from what it was some 14 years ago, when Meritha and her husband, Shahrokh, first opened their little 24-seat place in Pleasant Hills. After nine years, they moved to Shadyside and a much bigger location on Ellsworth Avenue. Now they have 80 seats on two floors.

Many customers (like His Honor and me) have followed them. We've had a half-dozen meals at Fajita Grill, in Pleasant Hills and now in Shadyside, and find the food both consistent and authentic. If you don't like Mexican, don't go. There is nothing else on the menu.

Mole, the potent national sauce of Mexico, is why I go to Fajita Grill. It's served here with chicken breasts in the popular entree, mole con pollo. Two breaded chicken breast halves, with sesame seeds, are sauteed and served atop the velvety, dark red mole sauce, which is both a little sweet and quite spicy. Walnut halves are along the edges of the plate, and curly, thin deep-fried yam strips are piled on top.

Mexican chocolate that sells under a brand name that translates to Grandma's in English, dried chilies and myriad other ingredients work together to make this thick, complex sauce, transforming the oh-so-bland chicken breast into an excellent dish.

Entrees are prepared to order at Fajita Grill, so you have time to relax, drink the cold beer you brought along, and check out the Mexican decorating touches. If you forgot beer, there's probably time to dash to the nearby bar and get a few bottles.

Our favorite place to eat is by the window in the front dining room, where we can watch the passing parade on Ellsworth Avenue. On busy nights, usually weekends, the upstairs dining rooms are used. And in good weather, the restaurant expands to the patio at the side of the building, where 45 more people can be seated.

One recent weekday evening, we were the only people in the restaurant when we arrived. Soon another couple came in, then another. Each time the delighted waitress went to the kitchen yelling "Two more."

Mole con pollo is one of a number of platillos regionales, or regional dishes from Mexico. Meritha has other south-of-the-border ways of preparing chicken breasts. She serves them atop a sweet sauce with fruits, herbs, vegetables and wine in a dish called pollo en estofado; with a sweet-sour tomatillo and hot chipotle sauce in entomatado; and with a spicy peanut/chipotle sauce, smoky and sweet, in encacahuatado.

Most everything on the menu is designated medium hot or hot. Even dishes not marked will be hot to many mouths. As a server said to H.H., who was searching for something mild: "This is, after all, a Mexican restaurant."

Spicy hot and sweet works together in some dishes. Camarones cocoloco, or butterfly shrimp coated with coconut flakes, is typical. The big, golden-brown shrimp, fried until crisp on the outside, are presented on a bed of spicy chopped cantaloupe, pineapple, honeydew and caramelized banana, and plain rice. Without the dried chilies heating everything up, such a dish would be sickeningly sweet.

Another popular seafood dish on the menu is mariscada, a steamed seafood platter with shrimp, mussels, clams, scallops, crawfish and lobster, with fresh lobster sauce. It sounds innocent enough, but be prepared.

All the platillos regionales are served with the house salad, a good combination of vegetables with an unusually good house dressing. The salad has mixed greens, red cabbage, celery, chopped tomatoes, mushrooms, cucumber and -- unfortunately -- thick hard slices of carrots. Only dentists could like those hard rounds of carrot.

The light house dressing is a vinaigrette seasoned with finely chopped fresh bell peppers and herbs. Don't miss it.

Vegetarians have a generous selection -- five platillos vegetarianos, as well as flautas, enchiladas and so on that can be vegetarian. I'm not a vegetarian, but when I ordered berenjenas al la Mexicana I didn't miss meat at all. It's breaded, seared eggplant with spicy tomato sauce mixed with jalapenos, onions, parsley, olives, capers and wine.

The chili is hearty -- thick and rich, with several kinds of beans, meat and two kinds of shredded cheese to sprinkle on top. Order this and perhaps a salad and it would be plenty for a meal. A better choice if you plan to order dinner is the tortilla soup, which has a thin, red-tinged broth and strips of crisp tortillas on top.

If you like to make your own fajitas, sauteed onions, bell peppers and filling of your choice come to the table sizzling hot, along with lettuce, cheese, sour cream, guacamole and pico de gallo, so you can go to work. And if you want something familiar, how about an order of enchiladas, or two corn tortillas with lots of shredded beef (or other filling) chipotle sauce, onion and cheese?

On second thought, there is something on the menu that is not hot or medium hot: dessert.

Take your choice: coconut rum flan, or chimichangas, with mashed banana inside the tortilla wrap, and lots of ice cream and chocolate. Both are cool and soothing, just right after all that spicy food you've been eating.

Fajita Grill
5865 Ellsworth Ave., Shadyside
412-362-3030

Hours: 5-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 5-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday.

The basics: Traditional and contemporary Mexican dishes; platillos regionales and salad, $14.50-$22; fajitas, $13.95-$19.50; enchiladas, burritos and flautas, $8.75; parking at meters along street; no smoking, except on patio; wheelchair accessible on ramp at the back; usually quiet; BYOB, with $3 a table corkage charge; Visa, Mastercard and Discover cards; reservations.

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