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Milagro

5 Mercer St., Toronto, 416-850-2855. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $100.

Milagro is the Spanish word for miracle . . . which is what we could have used our first night at Milagro restaurant on Mercer Street. Half an hour went by and we did not have a morsel to nibble. Is it déclassé to expect tortilla chips and snazzy salsa in a place billing itself as Toronto's first high-end Mexican resto? As for classy, the signature margarita arrives in a glass big enough to house a couple of goldfish, and when we order three starters the waiter has a hard time figuring out where to put them on the table. This is high end?

The tuna in the ceviche is rubbery (perhaps because of too lengthy contact with the lime juice?) and its cucumber, serranos, yellow peppers and capers are tasting tired. Up next is a dish of lobster tacos, an apparent oxymoron that just has to be ordered. Slightly tough small lobster chunks with refried beans, avocado and spicy chipotle pepper sauce makes for a pleasant moment -- but not a $16 one.

In the normal course of events, the mains come next, usually after a respectable interval of perhaps 20 minutes. Not tonight. We arrived at 7:40 and ordered dinner fairly promptly. At 9:30, there are still no mains, and the waiter asks if we'd like to see the dessert menu. We tell him we haven't been given our main courses yet. His face turns an interesting red colour. In 35 years of reviewing restaurants, I've had lots of unfortunate dining experiences, but this is a first: Never before have they forgotten to bring the main course.

The poor guy is horribly humiliated and promises it will only take seven to 10 minutes to deliver the mains. Which raises the question of just how much is being cooked in advance and reheated. The tampiquena that he brings eight minutes later doesn't exactly scream "à la minute." The steak is tough and overcooked, the Mexican-style rice is stuck together and gummy and the mole enchilada an unlovable combo of acrid sauce, overcooked chicken and soggy enchilada.

The buzz around town has been so hot on this place that we give them another chance a few days later. This time, the place feels like a different restaurant. It looks the same -- upmarket cantina, thanks to the grace of the tall vaulted arches left behind by previous tenant Monte Cristo, with some bright green paint and tall wooden palm frondy things added behind the banquettes -- but this evening they bring house-made tortilla chips and salsa to start, and everything we order appears.

Most of it is much better this time -- except the shrimp ceviche. I am fond of ceviche, but this one needs more coriander. Also, the promised bucket of hot sauces (which did appear last time) doesn't materialize. Equally disappointing is the tortilla soup (our third appetizer the first night). A classic tortilla soup is as complex as Venetian underpainting, built in layers on a foundation of good stock (I favour a combo of chicken and beef) with browned chilies, garlic and corn tortillas, and tomato merely as grace note. This version tastes thin and too much of tomato purée. The traditional crispy tortilla strip topping is also sadly absent. You can get a better tortilla soup at Wolfgang Puck fast-food outlets at airports.

Clearly, this is a kitchen that does better when things heat up. Shrimp fare fine in taquitos sirena, shrimp in a jumped-up sauce made from adobo and guajillo chilies, gentled with onions, almost enough coriander and small chunks of fresh pineapple.

The chef is Andres Anhalt, who owns Milagro with his brother, Arturo. The pair have been in the food business for years, Arturo as food and bev controller at the Windsor Arms and in other jobs at the business end of food service, and Andres as a chef running a tapas place in Mexico City, their hometown.

Chef Anhalt hits some high notes. He sears grouper fillets nicely and serves them with a light buttery lime sauce zinged with chopped serrano chilies, onions and coriander, and a wonderful side of nopal cactus salad. His cochinita pibil, Mexico's answer to pulled pork, is quietly seasoned with achiote and orange, but gets the lift it needs from vinegary pickled red onions and habanero peppers. Wrap it up in a house-made corn tortilla, and you can almost hear the mariachis play.

But the chef's most marvellous Mexican moment is a vegetarian one: Chilies rellenos are dark ancho chilies stuffed with smooth young goat cheese and served in spicy green sauce redolent of coriander and chili with a grand citric bite of lime.

Mexican desserts do not tend to tear the cover off the ball (if I had a nickel for every pockmarked thin flan I'd ever wasted money and calories on in Latin America . . .). But Anhalt edits flan for flavour: He adds cheese to the custard, producing a thick, rich dessert with a cheese back story. His custard with goat's milk caramel (a play on dolce de leche) is also entertaining, but the flan approaches divinity.

Finish dinner with a $28 snifter of aged tequila, which goes down like fine French cognac, and think of the Aztecs, who had their ups and downs, for Milagro is the Jekyll and Hyde of restaurants: One day it is wonderful, and another day it seems only a milagro would help.

jkates@globeandmail.com