There is something magical about the mole poblano at Tlali in Upper Darby, but it took me a moment to register what it is.
The Sandoval family’s mole, at first glance, is as deep a brown as any other you might have encountered from the state of Puebla, the result of a blend of dried chilies, fruits, and bittersweet Mexican chocolate. But when I swipe a juicy morsel of prime seared rib eye through the luxuriously dark puree, what I’m struck by is its ethereal lightness, both of the texture and the complexity of flavors. It’s so elegantly balanced, I taste each note — the smoky dry heat of chipotle meco peppers in the background, the fruity sweetness of ripe plantains and raisins, the nutty richness of walnuts and sesame seeds, a whiff of canela and bay leaf — all flowing into one earthy harmony of measured sweetness and spice.
What I’m tasting here, in fact, is Alberto Sandoval’s memory as a 10-year-old come to life. He vividly recalls the moment when his mother, Teresa Hernandez, was cooking that same mole for his father’s birthday in San Mateo Ozolco and held up a spoonful for Alberto to see.
“Your mole has to be this consistency — really light, not too thick, not too spicy. This is a good mole.”
Decades later, after a career rising through the ranks of some of Philadelphia’s most vaunted kitchens, including Striped Bass, Lacroix at the Rittenhouse, Le Bec Fin 2.0, Volvèr, Suraya, and Condesa, he and his brother, Efrain, are leaning into those memories of home for the menu at Tlali.
“These recipes represent who we are and where we came from,” says Alberto.
The base of that mole — which their mother still makes over the course of two days in Mexico and sends to her sons, who rehydrate and simmer it to completion with chicken stock — is only the beginning. Everything about this charming 18-seat BYOB the brothers opened in August inside a renovated pizzeria is a tribute to their birthplace in San Mateo Ozolco, the tiny town on the side of an active volcano in Puebla from which much of South Philly’s Mexican population immigrated. There’s an image of Popocatépetl, its volcanic peak ever fuming, depicted on a colorful woven mat that hangs above the open kitchen here. The hand-painted terra cotta ceramics that decorate the walls and deliver the food were all imported from Puebla.
The brothers have cut no corners in crafting the flavors on this menu, especially with another key building block: the tortillas. They are patiently made from blue and yellow heirloom Mexican corn that’s nixtamalized overnight then ground into fresh masa, resulting in pressed tortillas that have a velvety suppleness when cooked to order off the plancha.
You can taste this in the enmoladas, in which the tortillas are coated in that mole before being folded into half-moon bundles over tender shreds of chicken. The tortilla’s toasty corn flavor also powers the bright orange puree of Tlali’s tortilla soup. They’re fried into shatteringly crisp rounds for antojito starters like the irresistible mashed-to-order guacamole and tostadas topped with chipotle-stewed chicken tinga.
Those crispy discs also accompany the striking aguachile negro, making the perfect cracker on which to layer slices of raw kanpachi that have been bathed in a spicy brew of citrus and olive oil tinted black with charred habaneros and onions. Scattered with green tufts of cilantro and crunchy matchsticks of radish, it’s the single most refreshing starter on a list of other seafood cocktails that are solid but lack a little spark. A notable exception was Dorito Nayarit, in which poached shrimp striped with Valentina hot sauce and crema are served atop crispy pork belly crackers known as chicharrónes preparados. (A tuna tostada topped with a spoonful of frumpy poached tuna salad, though, was the one dish at Tlali where the extra-homey approach left me truly underwhelmed.)
Tlali, which means “land” in Nahuatl, the Indigenous language of Puebla, occupies a simple space on West Chester Pike that took a significant investment to completely rehab. It lacks the design frills of the high-style dining rooms where the brothers have largely worked, including Stephen Starr’s LMNO, where Alberto is still the chef de cuisine. There is nonetheless a comforting warmth to the pale green walls and natural wood wainscoting in Tlali’s dining room, bolstered by hospitality from the restaurant’s single server, Melanie Ortiz. She deftly sorted out a sticky situation by convincing a couple to move to a two-top after she’d accidentally sat them at the only remaining table reserved for a party of four (which happened to be us).
It’s clear from the many emails and messages I’ve received since this restaurant opened in Upper Darby — a multicultural nexus of international dining, but not previously known for Mexican food — that Tlali has a devoted clientele rooting for it to succeed.
After diving much deeper into the menu, it’s easy to see why. Tlali is in many ways a sequel to the small restaurant the two brothers used to co-own in South Philadelphia, La Fonda de Teresita, which closed during the pandemic. But the Sandovals have both since continued to grow as chefs and have taken their pursuit of family flavors to the next level. That includes a tribute to their father, Don Guero, who ran a taqueria in Mexico City by the same name where Alberto got his first taste of kitchen life as a teen mincing mountains of onions and cilantro.
Don Guero’s recipe for Chilango-style carnitas — whose pork belly and shoulder are simmered for hours in a large copper cazo pot bubbling with lard, orange juice, Coca-Cola, and herbs — produces meltingly soft, flavorful carnitas that are among the best I’ve had. But even that takes second place to the al pastor, a vertical spit of stacked pork shoulder marinated with three kinds of chilies, pineapple juice, achiote, and bay leaves; the pork roasts on a turning trompo fueled by real fire that flows through the perforated bricks that Don Guero himself gifted them from Mexico shortly before he died two years ago. The family taqueria lives on here.
The entree section of the menu noted as “Platos de Ozolco” offers a handful of other standout dishes that showcase the brothers’ hometown flavors in both traditional and modern ways. I was especially fond of the classic mixiote: When the maguey leaf-wrapped bundle of steamed chicken rubbed in adobo spice was cut open tableside, the fragrant cloud of guajillo-scented steam that enveloped us brought me straight back to my own 2023 visit to San Mateo with chef Dionicio Jiménez of Cantina La Martina, where mixiote was the first thing we were served at his mother’s home — the ultimate dish to welcome a special guest.
I was also intrigued to see Alberto and Efrain stretch their chef chops to reinterpret traditional flavors in inventive ways. That includes the michmole, which steeps a dried fish from Puebla in a tomatillo-chile salsa for deep marine flavor, then discards the bony remains for a golden sauce that gets topped with nopales and a gorgeous fillet of pan-roasted branzino (also lightly brined) to retain just enough of the traditional dish’s brackish edge.
Another distinctive offering pairs the chefs’ love of fresh pasta with head-on shrimp and a zesty ragù of house chorizo simmered in a lightly creamed chipotle salsa. It’s a unique dish that bridges the Sandoval brothers’ origin story with their current status as longtime contributors to Philadelphia’s contemporary dining scene. As they continue to grow their audience in this tiny Upper Darby dining room, I wouldn’t be surprised if more such creations appear.
I have no doubt that those future plates will remain somehow rooted in the memories of their mother’s table in San Mateo Ozolco, which not only give Tlali’s owners a proud reservoir of traditions, but an elusively distinctive and delicate family touch that will always be their own.
Tlali
7219 West Chester Pike, Upper Darby Township, 484-466-3593, instagram.com/tlalirestaurante
Full menu served daily, noon to 10 p.m.
Entrees, $12-$38
BYOB
Street parking only.
Not wheelchair accessible. There are two steps at the entrance and the narrow bathroom is not accessible.
Almost the entire menu is gluten-free, except for the cemita sandwiches.
Menu highlights: guacamole; empanadas; albóndigas; sopes; sopa de tortilla; aguachile negro; coctel de campechano (shrimp and octopus); tacos al pastor; carnitas tacos al estilo Chilango; res en mole Poblano; huarache Teresita; mixiotes de pollo; michmole; pappardelle with shrimp en chorizo ragù.
