Tortilla Flat

A new neon sign with lemon-yellow letters points out Medina’s Mexican Restaurant on Wornall. It’s a necessary beacon because the little building with the plateglass windows, the white-painted ironwork, and the 1960s patio lights is so unassuming, it’s easy to miss. Tucked between the pimento-pink Mediterranean villa that houses a lighting shop and the barber shop with its giant awning, this building was home for many years to the cozy Sancho’s, which served solid, inexpensive Mexican food with greasy tortilla chips and a strange warm-and-soupy dipping sauce.

Sancho’s had a following, although I was never a fan. The service was unfriendly, the ambience depressing, and the food (before chef Ernie Locke’s short tenure in the kitchen) underwhelming. And the joint didn’t even take credit cards!

Recently rechristened as Medina’s, the little restaurant has gotten both a fashion and a menu makeover — and a credit card machine. It’s now owned by the husband-and-wife team of Bobby and Mary Baker; he’s the smoky-voiced owner and namesake of Bobby Baker’s Lounge, a few doors to the south. Bobby Baker’s Lounge is a former neighborhood Irish pub that a hipster friend of mine calls “campy and fun, with the big round booth from the old Jasper’s under the front window.”

The neat and tidy Medina’s is anything but campy, though the old gothic altar podium up near the kitchen (a last relic of the Sancho’s era) is an eccentric touch. It now holds the electric credit card swiper, and a Virgin of Guadalupe hangs directly above it. But the old podium is due to be replaced by a much-needed storage cabinet. Space is at a premium at Medina’s, where the kitchen looks barely larger than a walk-in closet and the tiny dining room is overpowered by the heavy wooden chairs — mostly mismatched — shoved underneath each table. The Bakers have cloaked those tables with white vinyl, coated the walls with fresh paint, and hung framed Diego Rivera prints.

The place seems cleaner and brighter than its former incarnation, and the service is certainly friendlier, although a little rusty. On two occasions I asked to substitute fideo, an angel hair pasta in a mild, creamy sauce, for the rice that came with the meals. It’s a substitution that costs an additional 50 cents, but, hey, I was up for the expense. Alas, both times the plate soon arrived with a big old mound of that boring, saffron-colored Mexican rice. I just shrugged and ate it, tasting the fideo only when my friend Steve ordered it — and got it — on a later visit.

But the Bakers are still working out the kinks; the restaurant is their first. (Bobby was the waiter who forgot the fideo, and Mary is still working as an interpreter at Children’s Mercy Hospital while the restaurant gets off the ground.) The place is named for Mary Medina Baker’s family, and the cover of the four-page menu sports a 1940s photo of her parents, Louis and Bertha, as a young and beautiful couple; the dark-eyed Bertha is a dead ringer for ’30s film star Delores Del Rio.

“My parents come in here to help out,” says Mary. “We use my family’s recipes. My cousin Sylvia makes the flan.”

Since Medina’s is a mom-and-pop operation, I cut the place some slack. Steve, however, grumbled at not being able to order a Margarita. Medina’s doesn’t have a liquor license and isn’t going to get one: “The zoning is too difficult,” says Bobby. “We’re too close to a school and a church.”

But the family deserves points for its food, which came in generous portions and tasted fresh and flavorful — despite a conservative hand on the spice jars. The spicy ground beef burritos were surprisingly dull, and the dishes made with the usually intense chorizo sausage (spelled “chorizzo” on the Medina’s menu) had no bite. A burrito filled with chorizo, potatoes, peppers, and onion sounded wonderful, but the sausage needed to be much more fiery to balance out the starchy potatoes.

On the other hand, a dish of cheese and onion enchiladas — which sounded mellow and even unexciting — had an unexpected punch, thanks to a splash of cinnamon in the ancho chile sauce. And the chicken mole, fork-tender and delicious, had been made with cinnamon, chiles, and sugar instead of the traditional bitter chocolate. It’s still a wonderful, sensual mole, which we tucked into soft flour tortillas and dunked in the restaurant’s excellent dipping sauces: a milder tomato and cilantro variation and the better, bolder hot stuff, tasting of freshly roasted chiles.

My friend Bob thought the guacamole wasn’t nearly as good or fresh-tasting as the stuff served around the corner at the Waldo outpost of the Chipotle fast-food chain, but I disagreed — it was a little bland but tasted as if it had just been made. On one visit, Bobby even ran back to the kitchen and made a new batch while we waited. But be warned: The “half order” is about a fourth of the full-sized portion — Bob could polish off the small order in only four bites.

The menu isn’t elaborate. It includes a handful of appetizers and five “specialty” entrees, such as the chicken mole and two sizes of bowls for that Mexican delicacy menudo, a soup made from the lining of a cow’s stomach, hominy, and chile peppers. On each of my visits, I made a vow to order a small bowl and sample the soup, but I always panicked at the last minute. I still haven’t recovered from my chitterlings experiment.

“Not very many non-Mexicans order it,” says Mary. “In fact, hardly any.”

The soup is a legendary cure for hangovers (I forgot to ask if customers ever stumble over from Bobby Baker’s Lounge for a fortifying dose before heading home), but since I was nursing only big plastic tumblers of iced tea, I didn’t feel the need to give the tripe soup a swirl.

My own indulgence came on the night I gobbled down a basket of chips, a couple of chorizo quesadillas, and a big plate of chicken mole — and stuck around for dessert. It was a gloriously large wedge of decadent flan in a thick, rich caramel sauce. Steve, who is dieting, reached over with his fork to take a tiny taste, and his eyes lit up.

“It’s beyond fabulous!” he gasped, plunging his fork into the luscious, creamy triangle for several more — and larger — bites.

I was in a flan reverie of my own. Whispering a prayer to the Virgin (“Please let me lose every pound I gained in here tonight”), I paid our bill and trudged over an icy sidewalk to Bobby Baker’s Lounge so Steve could sit at the bar, smoke a cigarette (Medina’s seating is completely nonsmoking), and treat himself to a big glass of wine.

“It’s a very good restaurant,” he said, exhaling a lavish plume of cigarette smoke, “for people who care about just, you know, eating.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that.