Villa Victoria puts a delicious spin on Mexican food at its new digs

Three bites into a plate of takeout from the newest addition to Columbia City's food scene, my neighbor put down his fork and stared down at the jumble of roast chicken, tamales, rice, black beans and collard greens -- yes, collard greens -- with a mixture of awe and gratitude.

		JOSHUA TRUJILLO / P-I
	Naomi Andrade Smith draws on her Afro-Mexican-Native American roots to shake up her tasty fare.

"This is the best Mexican food I've had in Seattle," he said.

Agreed.

Chef Naomi Andrade Smith reopened Villa Victoria more than four years after its popular Madrona location closed. There is no seating in the new digs on the bottom floor of a series of live-work lofts built just east of Columbia City's main drag, from which Smith's white sign advertising her excellent tamales can be seen.

As you stand before the menu, you are struck by two things.

First, her prices are cheap. A burrito made with pan-seared Alaskan cod, finished with garlic and lime juice, is $6.95; the grilled steak, grilled chicken and adobo tofu burritos all sell for $5.95. Tamales -- whether chicken with Oaxacan mole, cheese and jalapeņo, or beef with red mole -- are $3 each. A whole butterflied roast chicken adobo is $8.95; it is so good my husband tried to make off with half of it before going to bed.

Second, her hygiene standards are higher than any other place I've visited. Each time her two workers went to make a new burrito, or the $3.25 salad of oranges and crunchy sweet jicama, they washed their hands and put on a new pair of gloves. I am typically not too hung up on that sort of thing, but their austerity comforted me.

All of the changing display case's food is prepared in Smith's new catering kitchen along Rainier Avenue South north of Columbia City, where after beating pancreatic cancer she began roasting the coffee she retails in Villa Victoria and wholesaling her tamales to Metropolitan Markets. She caters events both large and small and experiments with desserts there -- recently, a creamy $3.75 caramel flan and $1.25 cookies, from bitter chocolate truffle to a sweet orange Mexican wedding cookie.

Smith has a habit of mixing things up. It's something she learned from her lusciously tangled Afro-Mexican-Native American heritage. The burritos are made with flour tortillas, rather than corn; as one of Smith's workers pointed out, burritos aren't even really Mexican -- they are an American take on Mexican food -- so why confine the food stocking Villa Victoria's clean, bright space to what's typical?

"Afro-Mexican food is not so much the dishes as the color of the food and the heat of the food," Smith said.

Burritos are layered with cotija cheese and salsa negra, a Veracruz-style mixture of chipotle peppers and garlic that Smith calls "just the most wonderful, beguiling sauce."

"Once you taste it, you always remember it," she said.

She's right, and she's just getting started.

"I haven't even unleashed dessert tamales yet!" Smith said, laughing as she described coconut tamales steamed in banana leaves. "I am just having too much fun."