Sí, Boss

Lou Jane was the only one who had room for dessert, so she asked our server — a Catherine Zeta-Jones look-alike named Angelina — what sweets were available that night.

"A cheesecake," Angelina said, "and fried ice cream."

At El Patron, cheesecake isn't cheesecake but a thickly frosted slab of moist tres leches cake soaked with a mixture of evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and heavy cream. Imported from a Mexican bakery, the soft cake was delectably sweet.

I returned to El Patron a few nights later with Frankie and Diego, who were impressed that the restaurant appeared to be different from its Southwest Boulevard counterparts.

Diego looked around at the well-dressed clientele sitting in the booths against the south side of the building: "Johnson County sophisticates," he surmised, "and maybe one couple from Hyde Park."

He noted that the menu included "the usual suspects" — tacos, a burrito spread and enchiladas. But he decided to try one of the less familiar choices, a grilled steak topped with fresh cactus — carne asada con nopales.

"I thought it was going to be like one of those chewy Brazilian steaks, but it's more like roast beef — it melts in my mouth," he said after dinner arrived. "The cactus has a light, peppery edge."

Frankie, meanwhile, loved his hefty, cheese-drenched burrito, and I made fast work of three queso-filled enchiladas.

Frankie fell for Angelina's dessert line, assuming he was going to get a New York-style cheesecake, and was startled to receive the towering wedge of fluffy tres leches cake instead. But, he said, the spongy cake was "very fresh-tasting."

Diego shocked me by insisting on the fried ice cream. I warned him that it would probably be a rock-hard ball of vanilla ice cream rolled in soggy cornflake crumbs. Happily, I was wrong. At El Patron, the ice cream is encased in a thin shell of chewy toasted coconut.

"It's really good," Diego said, "although it doesn't taste like it ever went anywhere near a fryer."

But what really impressed him was that Mexican flag. After Stella offered him the cocktail, he quickly downed the contents of the three little glasses and smiled broadly.

"It goes to your head right away," he said, grinning like a big boss.