There’s a good reason why you start a Mexican meal with a shot of tequila and a bite of bracingly sour, salty lime. The two open your palate, preparing you for the subtle, delicate, complicated flavours that follow. Which brings me to a myth about Mexican food. This myth is that Mexican food means flabby flour tortillas and great big larded heaps of beans and rice and loads of cheese and two sauces: red and green. This could not be further from the truth. Mexican food – real Mexican food – is about slow cooking, refined flavours, and balance. Above all, balance.  In fairness, I think that thanks to chefs like Rick Bayless and the prevalence and huge popularity of taco trucks lately, most people know this, or are learning it.

This is the story of Taco Monday, as it was told to me by my one of my favourite Seattle dining buddies. Matt Dillon (no, not that Matt Dillon), is a hot shit chef in Seattle (that’s a technical term) and Sitka and Spruce is his restaurant. Since I moved to London, Sitka and Spruce also moved, to a beautiful space in the Melrose Market on lower Capitol Hill where from all reports it still turns out thoughtful, precise slow food.

But Taco Monday is not Dillon’s night. In fact, Sitka and Spruce used to be closed Mondays, but one of Dillon’s chefs – from Mexico City, I think – persuaded him to let him run a Mexican pop-up, called The Suadero, “food of the ‘malafacha’” (literally, poorly dressed). More about the suadero later.

“Taco Monday” is a bit misleading, because what they’re serving up isn’t anything like what you’d get from a taco truck. This isn’t street food, and if you’re expecting street food prices, you might get sticker shock. But it’s beautiful, exciting food, masterfully prepared.

We were all famished, so after a bracing round of tequila shots we ordered queso fundido (spiced melted cheese with poblano chiles served with toasted tortillas and pico de gallo, $8) and every taco on the menu. (My apologies: most of my photos are terrible, so you’ll just have to trust me that these plates were gorgeous.) With our first taco, I realized that the meal was going to be stellar. Cochinita pibil is Yucatecan-style suckling pig, traditionally buried in a pit and slow-cooked. I ate it whenever I could in the Yucatan – and some places did it better than others. This was extraordinarily good – rich and tender, lingeringly sweet, with a tingly hot kick from the habanero. Campechano ($8) – salt-cured beef with chorizo, chicharron and smoked jalapeno – was an immensely complex, exciting dish. Piles of lean cured beef topped with a crumbling of cotija cheese got a fatty boost and smoky heat from the chorizo and smoked jalapeno, with the crispy chicharrons (pork crackling) adding crunch and texture. Both vegetarian tacos – potatoes with poblanos ($7) and nopales ($7, grilled cactus with avocado salso and cotija cheese) showed the same careful attention to flavour, balance, and spicing as the meat tacos, the bright flavours and heat at equipoise (yes, equipoise) with the dense taste of umami.

I was skeptical of the halibut ($10) and the carne asada ($10).  How good could a fish taco and grilled steak be? Remarkably, surprisingly, astonishingly good, is the answer. The slightly charred grilled meat was rare, tender, and nicely seasoned, and the fish taco was bizarrely magnificent, a beautiful combination of succulent fresh delicately-fried halibut with a bright acidic pico de gallo and crunchy cabbage. Yes, classic, but not bog-standard.

But the dish that simultaneously made me want to cry and stab my friends’ greedy hands with a fork so I could eat it ALL was the dish for which the restaurant is named, the suadero ($9.50) – thin-cut tender brisket, milk-soaked and slowly braised until it literally melts on your tongue, topped with just a touch of chopped cilantro and a delicate salsa verde. It was the kind of dish that you tell your friends about later, the kind of dish that makes you come back to a restaurant.

So if you’re in Seattle on a Monday night, all I can say is RUN do not walk to Sitka and Spruce, and bring your auxiliary stomach and your favourite dining buddies, because Taco Monday, simply, is exceptional.

The Upshot

Sitka and Spruce Taco Mondays

1531 Melrose Avenue #6, Seattle 98122

Website: http://www.sitkaandspruce.com/mondays.html

Phone: 206.334-0662

Price per person: about $40-$50 per person, including drinks and tip

The verdict: Must try