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“Since opening two months ago, The New Mexicans—specializing, as the name says,

Published 7:00 am Monday, October 29, 2012

The New Mexicans, 1416 Hewitt Ave., Everett, (425)512-8607,facebook.com/pages/The-New-Mexicans.
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The New Mexicans, 1416 Hewitt Ave., Everett, (425)512-8607,facebook.com/pages/The-New-Mexicans.
The New Mexicans, 1416 Hewitt Ave., Everett, (425)512-8607,facebook.com/pages/The-New-Mexicans.
For New Mexicans adrift in Washington, though, the sudden in-state appearance of a restaurant serving decent sopaipillas is a stroke of incredible luck. New Mexico natives have flocked to The New Mexicans as surely as vegetarians stranded in beef country would beeline to an eatery called Kale.
The New Mexicans serves the homey dishes that owner Chrystal Handy knows how to make and make well.
The stacked green enchiladas are so good! The creamy enchiladas, baked in a casserole until its peaks burnish, are as comforting and undemanding as an old friend's hug. Each serving's a tumble of sweet chiles, green onions and coarse tortillas, topped with a mellow Jack cheese.
A brick-red bog, humming with the smoky, vegetal flavors of chiles, laps the edges of the red enchilada plate. The beefy sauce engulfs a stack of soft yellow corn tortillas, diced raw onions, iceberg lettuce shreds and grated cheddar cheese. Fleshy, salty pinto beans and two over-easy eggs, primed to infiltrate the gravy with the creaminess peculiar to yolks, round out the dish.
Owner Chrystal Handy says that the Hatch Chiles are a key ingredient in dishes.
The restaurant's defining sweet, though, is the sopaipilla, which New Mexicans don't save for dessert. The inflated squares of fried dough are a side dish, although the standard addition of butter and honey transforms the flaky, light pastry into a meal capper. Handy makes them aEœby feelaE which her two daughters find infuriating, since they're being groomed to take over the restaurant.
The sopaipilla.
The sugar-glazed cinnamon rolls that are sturdier and breadier than the sloppy, syrupy concoction that's become a food court mainstay. It takes 45 minutes for the rolls to rise, so Handy bakes them first thing every morning. aEœUsually we've got people waiting outside the door for them,aE she says.
In the lulling food category, the green enchilada has a worthy competitor in the chicken and dumplings, which is more cream than chicken—a lone, stamp-sized piece of poultry bobbed in my bowl—but elevated by tender, free-form knobs of pastry.
The tidy kitchen, which occupies more than half of the restaurant's indoor space (there's a patio out back), is arranged for home cooking on an expanded scale. It looks something like the small appliance section of a Goodwill. In addition to the various slow cookers and other contraptions, there are three white refrigerators, no larger than what an average apartment might require. It's an area that doubles as the back bar, which amounts to Jack Daniels, Sauza, Stoli, and a few more bottles in limited rotation.
The Rio Burger.

“Since opening two months ago, The New Mexicans—specializing, as the name says, in dishes from the yonder side of the western U.S. frontier—has been reliably shooting bull’s-eyes. The menu is refreshingly true to Southwestern mom-and-pop traditions: If you’re seeking green-chile cheeseburgers, Frito pie, or a range of other tarted-up icons that a less-secure restaurant might flaunt as proof of its authenticity, you might as well ride on.”Read the rest of Hanna Raskin’s review here.Photos by Joshua Huston.Published on July 9, 2012

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