Cabais Mexi-Deli

Food reviewers and food critics can be separated, to my mind, by their response to restaurants like Cabais. The job of a critic is to develop a critique of a restaurant, and to push, either explicitly or implicitly, for the development of a preferred approach to food. That preferred approach need not be doctrinaire or simple-minded; plenty of critics have well-developed models of restaurants that are much more sophisticated than a simple credo of, "Fancier is better," as I worry undergirds much distrust of food critics.*

A reviewer's job is more simple. They just say whether they liked a meal. They say why they liked it, or why they didn't. They try and give some context so that the reader can make their own evaluation, both of the restaurant in question, and the reviewer's and preferences. I see my role as a reviewer, rather than a critic, which informs the way I approach somewhere like Cabais.

Located on Fourth, between University and Washington, Cabais occupies an exceedingly modest physical plant. The menu reads no differently than most small Mexican kitchens in San Diego: a mix between sandwiches and Americanized Mexican food. A large chalkboard on the sidewalk tells you the special and the soup for the day. The tables are smallish, and the chairs moderately comfortable. It's usually packed, especially at lunchtime. In this case, the demos is correct.

I eat at Cabais at least four times a week; obviously, then, I enjoy it. It's virtues, for me, are three-fold: the food is tastier than it should be for the price, the service is pleasant, and it's about a block from my apartment. For me, Cabais is nearly perfect as a lunchtime deli.

The food is uniformly tasty, and, most importantly, fresh. The tortillas taste like, well, tortillas (incidentally, it wasn't until I moved to San Diego from the East Coast some years ago that I realized that tortillas even could have a taste), fresh and chewy. The chicken, available in a number of configuration, is tender and moist, usually with a nice, mild char on the outside. The salads, while largely unadventurous, are large and tasty, if a bit too heavy on green-leaf lettuce.

Moreover, this fresh, tasty food is cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Four bucks for a burrito and chips. Five and change for a sandwich and fruit. Combination plates top out around seven bucks, and they include rice and beans.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is greasy. This is my test of a low-budget restaurant -- if they can only buy taste at the cost of grease, that indicates that the ingredients cannot stand on their own. A greasy meal is particularly problematic at lunch; lunchtime is a time for a meal that perks you up, sets you back on your feet, rather than one that weighs you down, and drifts you into that nap you want around three o'clock.

Obviously, this is not haute cuisine. The atmosphere is deli-like. The menu is basically boring. The food, while fresh and tasty, has no statement to make, or bold ingredients; this is food you already know, rather than food that pushes you into new directions.

But, taken on its own terms, Cabais succeeds brilliantly. It serves the Hillcrest masses better food than they should be able to get for that money, and with a smile.

* As a side note, I have never understood the venom directed against Naomi Wise's review in the San Diego Reader (http://www.sdreader.com). She strikes me as a tremendously sympathetic critic, willing to engage restaurants largely on their own terms. Moreover, so long as the nigh-unreadable Duncan Shepard continues to write the movie reviews, it hardly seems fair to accuse Naomi of snobbishness.