La Viga in Redwood City serves Modern Mexican food, with a focus on seafood. La Viga is also the named after the largest seafood market in Mexico City. Its located on Broadway just outside the core cluster of restaurants and businesses. The chef owns LV Mar in RWC also and came from Mexico City.
After we sat down, we found out its restaurant week in RWC. They offered a specials menu in addition to the regular menu. We got:
Chuleta de puerco (restaurant week item): Pork chop, glazed on top with a tamarind sauce with green mole on the side. The sweeter glaze plus the slightly tart and hot green mole mixed with the pureed potatoes was delicious. Unfortunately the pork chop was overcooked. If it wasn’t, it would have been the highlight of the meal.
Pulpos salteados. Fresh tasting sauteed octopus and calamari in a garlic/ saffron soupy sauce with just a little heat from the recoto chile. Pretty nice.
Empanadas de camaron (restaurant week item): Mostly mushroom empanadas filled with Oaxacan cheese with a little shrimp. The earthy mushroom flavors dominated the small amount of shrimp flavor. They were fine, but its more apt to call them mushroom empanadas. The point of adding one or two small shrimps to them was lost.
Tacos: Cochinita (Yucatan braised pork) with pickled onion was ok. Nopal (grilled cactus) with guajillo chile was good. They were $4.5 each, and were compared to similarly priced tacos like Cala’s.
Tarta de Fruras Rojas (restaurant week item) - Its not a traditional tart , but rather a dense gelatin-y ‘jelly’ layered with berries.
The 2 agua frescas didn’t quite work. They both tasted overly watered down in flavors and fragrance.
Sous chef was in the house for the lunch. Our items showed an adequate attempt at modern Mexican for the Bay Area. Everything tasted pretty clean and neat. They were not quite tying together the flavors like Cala or Nido. But the food was not bad for the Peninsula. This meal was our first at La Viga. We’ll be back to try other items on the menu. Would love to hear experiences/ menu favorites.
