Review: At Casa Azul, Buffalo's finest Mexican restaurant builds rep with culinary craft

Making every tortilla, squeezing limes for every margarita, Zina Lapi's place is an after-midnight oasis at Allen and Elmwood

Cod in corn poblano chowder, fingerling crisps, at Casa Azul

In 2015 Vincenza Lapi, a young cook from Grand Island, introduced herself to Buffalo with an arancini-focused food truck named the Blue Balls Bus. 

So it is especially delicious to see what Zina Lapi hath wrought at Allen and Elmwood, the crossroads of Buffalo nightlife. Casa Azul means “blue house” in Spanish. Sticking with the azure inspiration, Lapi swapped Italian-American snacks for a soulful lineup of Mexican-inspired cooking and insistence on what James Roberts of Toutant calls “doing things the hard way for the right reason.”

Casa Azul’s crew makes its corn tortillas every day. They squeeze all the limes, lemons, and oranges for the margaritas, juicing case after case of citrus for Cinco de Mayo alone. Many of the 40 ingredients for the mole verde are charred and roasted in batches before joining dry-roasted spices in the blitzer.