Venue Review: Tino's Place

It’s rare to find a soup that looks like it could beat you up, but the steaming Siete Mares at Tino’s Place really does.

A claw reaches menacingly over the rim of the bowl, trailed by three prickly pink legs. A tentacle briefly drifts to the steaming surface before sinking to the depths.

“You’re afraid of it, aren’t you?” my wife said when the soup arrived at our table.

I have to admit, until I tasted it, I was. The Siete Mares, or “Seven Seas,” ($14.95) turned out to be a luscious bowl of red broth brimming with vegetables, shrimp, scallops, fish, clams, octopus and half a crab. The dish goes way beyond the landlocked expectations most people have for Mexican food. But going beyond expectations is what Tino’s is all about.

The four-page menu, which runs from basics such as tacos ($1.50) and tamales ($2) to raw oysters (market price) and pan-fried garlic trout ($9.95, and fantastic) is just as irresistible as the soup, which had me scraping the bowl until the last tentacle was devoured.

The restaurant’s location, in a shabby stretch of East Platte Avenue among pawnshops, topless bars and a murder scene or two, makes the same first impression as the soup. But inside, Tino’s has a reassuring homey neatness. Twin rows of booths run down a long spotless Saltillo tile floor. Through an archway is a karaoke room where the oompah beat of Norteño on the jukebox is punctuated by the clack of pool balls and the high lilting “ayee-ayee-ayees” of amateur Mexican troubadours.

Tino’s sits on the tip of a slice of town, roughly between the intersections of Union and Platte avenues, Academy Boulevard and Platte, and Academy and Airport Road, that could fittingly be called the Taqueria Triangle. It’s the dwelling place of the majority of the city’s Mexican Mexican restaurants (places owned by and tailored to Mexican immigrants).

Here, immigrants serve dishes such as chicken in pumpkin mole, tacos with beef tongue and tangy tomatillo salsa that are old traditions south of the border but have an exotic ring in Colorado Springs.

Quality in the Triangle swings from heavenly to hepatitis shot.

Tino’s is one of the great ones — unapologetically authentic, yet gringo-friendly.

Tino, the jovial owner, tends to work the room wearing a red apron.

His wife and brother work the kitchen, whipping up dishes from their home state of Oaxaca.

Ask what’s good, and Tino will probably say the ceviche ($11.95).

This simple dish of raw fish or shrimp cured in lime juice and served with fresh cilantro, tomato, onion and jalapeño is prepared to order (a rare thing) and served in a wreath of tomato and cucumber slices 15 minutes later, just as the shrimp is turning from cloudy gray to pearly pink.

Raw seafood on Platte sound too scary? Tino also makes the dish with cooked shrimp.

Terrestrial dishes don’t disappoint, either. The asada tacos are light and lean. The tamale with beef, chicken or pork is skillfully homemade and one of the spicier things on the generally tame menu.

For more heat, ask for a dish of the phenomenal homemade salsa caliente — a blend of acerbic dried red chiles that otherwise stays hidden in the back.

A few things are unexceptional.

The batter on the chile rellenos in the combo plate ($8.95) is eggy to the point of sponginess.

But the chile pepper at the heart of it is a hit.

The green sauce over the tamales is a piquant tomatillo salsa, not an earthy New Mexican green chili, but that’s to be expected. This is Mexican Mexican, not Colorado Mexican.

Save room for dessert.

Tino’s wife, Xochitl, makes carrot cake and a dynamite chocolate cake with a crown of flan. (She calls it Flan Impossible.)

The service here never leaves you wanting, and the well-priced menu is solid enough to forge first-timers into regulars.

Anyone inspired to explore the regional cuisine of Oaxaca further is in luck. A daily overnight bus to the border leaves from the front door. A ticket costs $45.