El Gran Mexicano

[Joy]

zarela martinez has a restaurant in manhattan. why not give her a call?

[201]

Well, I'm going to ask the obvious question... if one doesn't find great mole poblano at El Gran Mexicano, then where? Provided there is a place within the NY Metro area I'd like to be able to have a concrete example I can taste rather than a theoretical one.

I do know that the Mexican chocolate used to to make Mexican hot chocolate (i.e. Ibarra) is very sweet. In fact, it's too sweet for my tastes. There was a short discussion of that on this thread.

There's also some more discussion on moles and Mexican chocolate on this thread where the general consensus seems to be that Mexican chocolate is sweet.

Keep in mind, I'm not arguing that there is no unsweetened chocolate used in Mexico... after all wasn't it the Aztecs who first discovered chocolate? I would imagine there must be SOME diversity in the types of chocolate available. However, running with Joy's idea above, perhaps a telephone call to El Gran would settle the question of which type of chocolate THEY use in their mole poblano?

I'd also like to add that I'm still a fan of their mole poblano... just in case that got lost in the above.

[Jason Perlow]

It seems that Nockerl and I are BOTH right.

http://www.ramekins.com/mole/recipesmole.html

Recipes here that use Abuelita, Ibarra and UNSWEETENED chocolate.

So as usual, it boils down to the family tradition itself or the person making it.

[jhlurie]

Glad you got that out of your system?

To be honest, for years I've always heard that Mole Poblano=unsweetened chocolate. Jason isn't the only one. Then again, I've also heard that there are no less than 10,000 different recipes for it.

[tommy]

can i go back to hating everyone now? jeez, that really took a lot out of me. i gotta call my lawyer. he says that you *both* are wrong.

[201]

I stopped by El Gran tonight and asked Mauricio about the mole poblano. He said it IS made from sweet chocolate and yet that it IS supposed to have that bitterness from the toasting of the peppers. So basically, we're all right and we're all wrong and I don't know what's what anymore.

Glad that's settled.

[jhlurie]

Alright, 201. You are definitely going to hell for stirring this up again.

[Nockerl]

Might as well have a link to the review....... Edited April 24, 2003 by Nockerl (log)