Elote puts corn front and center

It’s customary for a restaurant to ask a diner’s preference for certain things. How well done do you take your steak? Which toppings on your pizza? How spicy your chicken? It’s far less common for the key question to be, “How do you like your corn?”

But a new spot in Escondido does just that, putting corn front and center. Behind a smiling corn cob logo, the restaurant Elote actually offers a standard Mexican food menu, including the likes of tacos, quesadillas, and carne asada fries.

However, the concept relies heavily on a mobile corn roaster parked inside a patio at the front of the shop. It’s the sort of small, towable trailer you might encounter at a street fair or swap meet. Inside, a conveyor system rolls baskets of corn past the heating element for an even roast on all sides. The baskets fit potatoes, as well, which may explain why Elote also features baked potatoes on the menu.

But it’s the traditional, Mexican street food renditions of corn that drive the shop. And the first question you need to answer is whether you prefer your corn en palo (on the cob, $4) or en vaso (in the cup, $6).

The word elote is the name given to the dressed up corn on the cob sold on Mexican city streets, and a few street carts that cruise San Diego neighborhoods. You can always ask for plain elote, or for a simple, buttered cob, the way most non-Hispanic Americans are used to dressing it. The restaurant Elote will serve it however you like, but when you go for the street food standard you get a lot more flavor: a cob slathered with a combination of mayonnaise, cotija cheese, the chili-salt seasoning tajin, lime, and hot sauce.

A similar concoction is what you get in the cup, which street vendors sell by the name esquites. For esquites, the kernels are sliced off the cob, and loaded into in a paper cup along with all the aforementioned ingredients to make a saucy corn salad.

Both preparations create a tangy, spicy complement to the sweetness of fresh corn, but the esquites cost a bit more because it features a bit more of everything. It can be fun to eat off the cob, but it certainly feels more indulgent to spoon big mouthfuls out of a cup. For an extra buck each, you may even have them add-in items including bacon and flaming hot Cheetos.

These make great snacks, but unlike street food vendors, Elote is set up to keep people around. It’s got a fairly large dining room, equipped with several wall-mounted TVs tuned to sporting events, where people might enjoy an afternoon of corn, tacos, beer, and more corn.