Corazon y Miel Review: Craft Cocktails and Creative Cooking Take Up Residence in a Surprising Place

Twenty years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that practically every small town in America would one day have an espresso bar. You could barely get a decent cup of coffee in New York City, let alone the wilds of Iowa. And what about sushi? In the '90s it was still vaguely exotic outside of major cities; today you can get it at Walgreens.

See more of Anne Fishbein's photos of Corazon y Miel.

It's interesting to think about what might come next — what perk of urban affluence will slowly creep its way to ubiquity? Could it be that 20 years from now, craft cocktails will be as common as cappuccino and California rolls?

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Pan con chompipe, a Salvadoran turkey-leg sandwich, at Corazon y Miel.

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Corazon y Miel

6626 Atlantic Ave.
Bell, CA 90201

Category: Restaurant > Latin

Region: Southeastern Cities

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More About

• Corazon Miel
• Anne Fishbein
• Eduardo Ruiz
• Main Dish Recipes
• Food and Cooking

Leading the fight to bring mixology to an ever-widening audience in L.A. is Corazon y Miel, the new Bell restaurant that's expanding the geography of cocktails-with–egg whites, as well as the modern, internationally influenced gastropub.

It's exciting for people who care about food to see ambitious restaurants opening in a place like Bell, a blue-collar, mainly Latino city. Only 10 minutes from downtown, Bell feels worlds away; to outsiders, it's chiefly famous for the corruption scandal that brought down nearly its entire municipal government. While there's plenty of fantastic food to be had in Bell (La Casita Mexicana, one of L.A.'s most beloved Mexican restaurants, is practically right around the corner from Corazon y Miel), there's not a whole lot of gussied-up bar snacks or things garnished with candied citrus zest.

Rather than storm into Bell with fancy food and a hipster attitude, Corazon y Miel is looking to fit into the neighborhood, with dishes that are mainly Latin-influenced at an incredibly reasonable price point. Some of that food is delightful, and some of it could use some work. But there's no doubt that the restaurant's heart is in the right place.

Corazon y Miel (which translates to "hearts and honey") is a project of Travis Hoffacker and Robin Chopra, along with chef Eduardo Ruiz, who worked at Animal for a couple of years as a tournant, or the cook who makes the rounds in the kitchen, helping out on various stations as needed. Ruiz's new restaurant is a fairly tiny operation: It used to be a bar and it still feels like one, with tables along one wall and the bar taking up most of the other wall in the long, narrow, brick-walled room. A large, flat-screen television hangs over the bar, playing sports. It's a room that begs for revelers, drinking up a storm.

If those revelers were to show up, there would be plenty to drink. The bar is manned by Christian Pulido, and there's something for everyone on this drinks list: horchata with vodka, Kahlua and amaretto; sticky-sweet rum coconut concoctions, garnished with a Popsicle; odd margaritas made with vodka and spruced up with candied tamarind; a couple of fantastic pisco cocktails with the requisite of-the-moment bitter finish. Flavored shots are available in groups of three for $8. There are traditional sangrita and tequila combos, as well as micheladas and margaritas. There's wine as well, but you don't want it.

You certainly can see Animal's influence on the food menu, mainly in its worship of fatty meats: chicken hearts (the restaurant's namesake dish), pig skin two ways, chicken feet, many things wrapped in bacon. The cultural influences are mainly Mexican but also Californian and Latin American. Like much of L.A.'s best food, this is cuisine that refuses to be shunted into any particular box.

What you won't find are tacos, or really any other Mexican standby. Guacamole? Nope — instead there's a quartered fried avocado, crusted in coconut and served with a mango chutney. There's a dish that pays homage to all manner of Mexican street treats, a bacon-wrapped, chorizo- and cheese–stuffed jalapeño, served over a bed of mayo-slicked corn, which is advertised as "elote salad."

Continuing with the bacon-wrapped theme, dates get the porcine robe as well. It's a familiar dish, prepared here with the deep sweetness of the date offset by whipped cotija cheese rather than the classic blue. In the center, an almond crunches, giving the mouthful depth and nutty weight.

Like any decent gastropub, Corazon serves a couple of huge, unwieldy burgers worth ruining your shirt for. Flank steak is mezcal-marinated and served a tender medium rare. You can also have it in the lomo hash, over a jumble of bell peppers and french fries with a poached egg and an almost undetectable whiff of wasabi.

There's a playfulness at work here, and also a sweet tooth evident even in many of the savory dishes. Sometimes it works, but oftentimes it overwhelms. The Coca-Cola reduction on the fried pork rillettes tastes like what you'd imagine it might — soda syrup. Is it even a good idea to fry rillettes? The basic deliciousness of the dish exists in the creaminess of the fat; once it's fried, all that fat turns to liquid, leaving an odd, oily but somehow dry slice of shredded meat that has more in common spiritually with Spam than any other rillettes I've had.