Has it been a while between margaritas at this Beaufort St favourite? Time to change that

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Regular readers of this column may recall a recent essay celebrating El Taco Guru & Son, the Ortega family’s soulful, mobile taqueria that regularly gets name-checked in local best-taco discussions. Which means that, according to ancient food-reviewing lore, your correspondent should wait at least a month before turning his attention to any other Mexican restaurant in Perth.

Good thing, then, that El Publico isn’t just any other Mexican restaurant in Perth.

Opened in 2012 by Paul Aron, Alex Cuccovia and Michael Forde, this magnetic small bar was a driving force behind the modern Mexican food movement in Perth (and even Australia, some might argue).

It was a chirpy dining room lined with white splashback tiles rather than sombreros and cacti. It offered a menu that eschewed tamales, chilli con carne and other Old El Paso hits in favour of seafood tostadas and deep-fried crickets.

It was a bar that argued that tequila was about more than just worms in bottles and waking up as a teenager with category five hangovers. (Agave-based spirits, for instance, were equally capable of ruining mornings for drinkers in their 20s and 30s.)

Crucially, El Publico was also the first kitchen that David Lado, a chef from Mexico’s Puebla region, worked in when he and his baker wife Andrea Salazar moved to Perth in 2017.

In a sweet full-circle moment, the couple became El Publico’s new owners in late 2024 and have since been slowly turning the place into their vision of a more modern, more Mexican, modern Mexican cantina.

Part of this vision, of course, entails not messing with proven formulas, which is why (former?) regulars may recognise some familiar names on the carte. Names such as beef mogo mogo balls, say: billiard balls of succulent beef brisket fried to a dark chocolate sheen.

That famous street corn (aka esquites) is still here, too, although El Publico’s long-standing signature of braised corn enriched with mayo, lime and chilli has put on some serious size since I last saw it. (Is it just me, or is much of the dish’s flavour now derived from its accoutrements rather than the corn itself?)

But if your interests are geared more towards the now, head chef Emmanuel Mondragon and sous chef Jorge Sanchez have you covered. The sweet stuff includes newcomers such as chocoflan, a dense chocolate cake crowned with a layer of rich, eggy flan.

At the other end of the meal, carne apache pave equals minced raw rib-eye cured in lime and chilli, stacked on bricks of fried potato cake. What a riff on steak tartare. What a two-bite snack. What an introduction to contemporary Mexican cooking, El Publico-style. (For so long, the word has borrowed liberally from Mexican kitchens. It only seems fair that Mexican cooks return the favour.)

And now to the tacos. Or more specifically, the tortillas they’re made with. While the rise of La Tortilla has put world-class tortillas in reach of many, El Publico has recently switched to making its own tortillas. From scratch.

Which means not using pre-ground masa corn flour, but soaking, cooking and grinding their corn daily, including the crucial nixtamalisation process that unlocks much of the grain’s nutrition and deliciousness.

The result? Dense, weighty discs of serious corniness that are ideal vehicles for taco fillings that are regional (rib-eye gaonera sees fine ribbons of aged beef grilled and showered with straw fries); classic (Baja-style fish tacos starring battered hoki dressed with chipotle mayo); and classic-inspired (al pastor is remade as a round of pork belly rolled and braised a la Japanese chashu).

Baseline flavour aside, these tortillas are also big. I don’t carry rulers to restaurants so I can’t verify whether each tortilla is, as Lado says, 18 centimetres across. But using the critical how-many-bites-is-this? metric – eating an El Publico taco involves at least four mouthfuls – I’d say he speaks the truth. Empanadas and gorditas (the menu describes them as “croquettes”; I’d say “thick, fried pucks of masa”) stacked with beans and pulled pork further demonstrate the versatility of corn.

Fresh masa is just one aspect of this DIY spirit. Cheese is made in-house, as is the mango juice that powers the spicy margaritas and other mixed drinks. Because, despite this strong food focus, drinking and revelry remain integral to the El Publico experience.

Which means that on weekends, the blue or orange-hued room fills with noise, service feels closer to sufficient than efficient, and the pink QR codes attached to each table become necessary evils.

Some will love the chaos. Others will prefer visiting on weekdays or at lunch – spring and summer only, alas – where the pace slows and staff have time to breathe and be their most charming selves.

These quieter moments also offer the clearest glimpses of a Beaufort Street favourite that, bolstered by its all-Mexican leadership team, is both ready and willing to win over a new generation of eaters and drinkers.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.