Sí Señor Mexican Street Food
506 Rideau St., 613-421-7490,
sisenor.ca
Open:
Monday to Thursday 3 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 9 p.m., closed Sunday
Prices:
tacos $4.50
Access:
steps to front door
For my first meal inside a restaurant in more than three months, I wanted something special.
Like many others, I spent my COVID-19 winter eating takeout fare. During last weekend’s balmy weather, I emerged craving not just someone else’s cooking but also their hospitality (with all the pandemic precautions that are tied to Ottawa’s red-zone designation, naturally).
Perhaps any meal at an eatery’s table would have been special. But I picked Sí Señor Mexican Street Food on Rideau Street for my first on-site restaurant meal of 2021. What lured me to the two-year-old eatery for the first time was the promise of tacos and more with the heft of authenticity to them, since Si Señor is owned and operated by Mexico City expat Hugo Crespo.
Most intriguing of all was the online menu’s mention of not just my favourite meaty fillings for tacos — orange juice-marinated pork carnitas, locally sourced Mexican chorizo sausages, Yucatan-style cochinita pibil pulled pork — but also birria de borrego, a lamb stew I hadn’t previously seen in Ottawa. As I’ve previously written, if a restaurant debuts a regional specialty in Ottawa, that’s the equivalent of hailing me with the Bat-Signal.
The four of us walked down Rideau Street on Saturday night, having reserved four spots. In fact, Sí Señor, a former pizza place, seats just six people inside plus up to eight more on its street-facing patio.
We entered the restaurant and found it modestly furnished but filled with bright colours and Mexican pride, thanks to Crespo’s collection of his homeland’s art and pottery displayed on the walls. But we didn’t spend that much time admiring the ambience, as we were hungry and the smells from the kitchen only exacerbated things.
For such a small place, Sí Señor has a surprisingly long menu, spinning variations off of its core products. Crespo offers 10 fillings for carnivores made with pork, chicken, beef, shrimp or lamb. For vegetarians, there’s a black bean and cabbage option or sauteed peppers, onions and cactus in pastor sauce. You can choose to have your fillings in corn tortilla tacos, flour tortillas, burritos, quesadillas made with house-made corn tortillas, and huaraches, a house-made sandal-shaped cornbread I’ll have to sample next time. Pork carnitas and pulled pork also appear in sandwiches, and since we’re in Ottawa, Crespo had to offer “taco poutines,” which top fries with your choice of filling, guacamole, sour cream and queso fresco cheese.
I went straight for lamb slow-cooked in banana leaves on a familiar corn taco and enjoyed the sumptuous meat and concentrated flavours of its sauce and garnishes.
I also tried two of Sí Señor’s tamales. While the doughy package adorned with shredded pork and green sauce was good, the chicken and mole tamal was the winner thanks to its earthy, nutty goodness.
In pre-COVID times, I would ask for and receive morsels of food from my dining companion’s plates. But for the time being, with virus variants abounding, I’ll just take their word about a dish’s worth. One dining companion who had lived in Mexico City for several years vouched for Crespo’s chicken and pork tacos, while another less-traveled friend thought very highly of the chorizo and shrimp tacos.
The fourth person in our party tried Sí Señor’s pozole soup and praised its homey feeling and abundance of shredded chicken. I ordered the same soup to go and had it for lunch the following day, when I found it good, if too salty.
Later this week, I went back to Sí Señor because another of Crespo’s items — hard to come by in Ottawa too, I believe — had to be tried. I ordered quesabirrias, which are made with either stewed lamb or beef (both halal, says the eatery’s website) and come with a dipping sauce made from the stewing liquid.
I liked the cheesy, not-quite-crunchy, meaty, sauce-y treats I took home and resolved to try them again after reading an internet report that called quesabirrias (which joins the Spanish words for cheese and stew) a hot taco trend (of 2019, it should be noted) in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I wondered if Crespo’s quesabirrias would have been more crisp and therefore better either eaten on site or refreshed in my oven at home. Crespo, when I spoke to him this week, answered yes.
We also had two of Sí Señor’s solidly made desserts. We were hard-pressed to say whether we preferred the tres leches cake, a sponge cake made with evaporated milk, condensed milk and heavy cream, or the crunchy churros with chocolate dipping sauce.
Sí Señor is licensed and serves tequila, margaritas, pina coladas and five Mexican beers. We went for the house-made hibiscus iced tea, which was pleasantly not too sweet, and imported Mexican soft drinks instead.
The restaurant also serves jars of its from-scratch salsas to go. The pineapple and habanero salsas are made for heat-lovers, Crespo warns.
Crespo, who was a bank’s mortgage specialist before he opened his eatery, says Sí Señor has fared much better than expected during the pandemic. He doesn’t want to brag, but says his 2020 was much better than his 2019. Tasting his food, I can see how Sí Señor earned its popularity.