In La Mesa Village, Papalo blends herbs, moles, and smoke to create Sonoran BBQ

When my ribs plate arrives, it doesn’t look all that different from the average BBQ order. There’s a metal serving tray, lined with butcher paper, and there are smoked ribs in a glistening coat of dark brown sauce. The surest sign this deviates from Texas or St. Louis or Kansas City or any other familiar style of BBQ would be that each rib is also topped with a mix of chopped herbs and nuts. And when the first tender bite pulls away from the bone, the sauce turns out to be cherry glaze merged with Oaxacan mole.

I’m in La Mesa Village, visiting its newest restaurant, Papalo, for the third time already. Drew Bent, the founding chef behind the wood-fired taco menu of Michelin-honored taco bar Lola 55, opened this BBQ counter shop in early November, after testing out the concept with pop-up eateries in North Park and East Village.

The concept? Sonoran BBQ, an idea that claims the Sonoran Desert as a starting point. It was breathing that fragrant desert air, Bent tells me, that he decided, “I want to make food that tastes how that smells.”

The Papalo BBQ counter and dining room

The Papalo dining room is accented with sage plants and desert sunset colors, while its kitchen cooks with local oak, infusing a range of proteins with smoky, southwestern aura. But the influences don’t end at the borders of the desert, which covers half the Mexican state of Sonora, much of Arizona, and hugs greater San Diego to the east and south.

Bent has devoted a good chunk of his life to Mexican cuisine, which is how I wind up finding Oaxacan flavors in that cherry glaze BBQ sauce. They may have developed on different sides of the border, Bent figures, but in a sense, mole and BBQ are cousins. As sensational as this fusion tastes on the ribs, a different, Papalo’s house mole BBQ sauce arguably works even better on the restaurant’s boneless grilled chicken.

For those of us attuned to San Diego BBQ spots, Papalo’s arrival may soften the loss of El Barbecue, which closed this fall after a three-year run likewise combining American smoked meat traditions with Mexican flavors, including mole and BBQ sauces. However, when it came to proteins, El Barbecue’s menu matched up with the traditional offerings shared by several local smokehouse menus: most notably Texas brisket and Santa Maria tri-tip.

Outside of the pork ribs, Papalo and its Sonoran BBQ takes a different approach. Its menu doesn’t specify any particular cut of beef or pork, instead offering daily beef and pork plates ($19 each, with two sides, $8-9 a la carte).

Slices of smoked picanha, likened by the chef to a "carne asada steak"

If you’re looking for brisket, see the house cheeseburger ($17), which features a charred hockey-puck of a smoked brisket patty. Most days in the early going, the beef of the day is picanha. That’s a Brazilian cut of beef comprising what American butchers might call top sirloin cap, what the French call a coulotte. Like brisket, it features a ribbon of fat to add flavor. Bent chars the fat and smokes the beef to produce what he likens to a steak of carne asada. Instead of BBQ sauce, this one’s served with a spicy chimichurri, rounding out the South American influence, and yielding a distinctive cut of BBQ that basically blesses your mouth with the lingering pleasure of savory smoke.

Is it the taste of southwestern desert? The beginning of a new school of BBQ? These aren’t really questions I ask with each return visit to Papalo. It’s more like, everything’s tasted great so far, should I try the fried chicken sandwich ($15)? Should I try the sliced pork shoulder steak with the chipotle-inflected white BBQ sauce? Or, if it’s Sunday, should I sample the birria? These questions have ultimately proven more relevant, and so far the answer has been emphatic: yes.