Qué Padre

Brushing up on your Spanish before you head to Qué Padre isn’t necessary, but if you’re in a rush to get in and out, it certainly wouldn’t hurt. When my lack of Spanish skills became clear to our server on a recent Friday night, her warm smile quickly turned into an expression of fear. As she wordlessly set the menus (written in Spanish) on our table and scurried away, I struggled to think of something I could say to get her back. But a pathetic “Gracias!” was all I could muster.

Our server spoke as much English as I spoke Spanish, but if there’s one thing that stands out about this Humboldt Park storefront, it’s an eagerness to serve. After 27 years of working the front of the house for restaurants such as Ina’s, Ambria and TRU, owner Milton Cardenas has good service in his blood. Soon our server had a cheat sheet in her hand, and together we worked our way through the menu, including the three preparations of rabbit, the chicken in adobo sauce (pictured, upper left) and the steak frites in mole (pictured, upper right).

There are only three appetizers on Qué Padre’s Mexican-Ecuadorian menu, and I ordered two of them—the sincronizada and the empanadas. The sincronizada was a fine, snacky kind of dish, essentially a simple ham-and-cheese quesadilla. Aside from its simplicity, it was difficult to fault. The empanadas, unfortunately, were more problematic, as they were filled with underspiced beef and completely cold in the center. The third appetizer, steak sopes, came to our table unexpectedly, presumably as an apology because things were moving so slowly. The fact that they were free helped the dish; if I had paid for it, the lack of flavor and slightly chewy meat would have been more disappointing.

But soon another unexpected dish came out—“lamb consommé,” our server said. In this unremarkable dining room, consommé was the last thing I had expected, but after one taste things were suddenly looking up. It was a simple soup, the broth sprinkled with a few grains of rice, but it was layered with subtle flavors of salt and spice.

There was another long wait for our food after we had finished our soup. Later in the evening we found out that the only person in the kitchen was Cardenas’s wife, Irma. Still, I might have found this sort of wait outrageous if the food was mediocre. But as it turns out, our entrées were delicious. Lamb shank (pictured, foreground) sported succulent meat so heavy with juices that it was just barely hanging on to the bone, a bit of salsa verde a lively addition to the rich dish. The equally enormous and juicy chicken was plump, tender and, in an odd yet delicious way, even a little sweet.

“Everything okay?” our server asked. This time my limited Spanish made sense.

“Sí, gracias.”

4107 W North Ave between Karlov and Kedvale Aves (773-252-7426). Bus: 53, 65, 72. Lunch, dinner. Average main course: $10.