It’s a miracle to find this kind of home-style Mexican cooking on High Street

Some restaurants manage to feel like the living room of a neighbourhood from day dot – if you were able to bottle the essence of this conviviality, you’d have a priceless commodity on your hands. Because the feeling is so hard to quantify, it’s equally difficult to describe. I don’t know why Chabela’s brick-walled room with its high and low wooden tables feels like the heart of Thornbury right now, but it does.

It has to do with the lighting, perhaps, the pendant bulbs dangling from a slightly sculptural squares-in-squares ceiling, more back-lit squares on the walls containing framed pictures and cans of ingredients. But more than anything, it has to do with the warm chatter, the neighbourly feeling, and the fact that locals have obviously welcomed this newcomer with gleeful enthusiasm.

Chabela is the work of Harry Lawrence and Karla Martinez, a couple who met in Mexico City, specifically Coyoacan, one of the city’s most vibrant (and delicious) neighbourhoods. The cooking here is unlike even the better of Melbourne’s standard Mexican eateries: more subtle, more complex, and much more like the food cooked in the homes of Mexican families.

It might seem counterintuitive to say it’s a very good sign for our city’s Latino food scene when a Mexican restaurant opens without guacamole on the menu, but it means we’re getting broader and far less reductive in our tastes. In a city partly defined by our affinity for avocado, surely you can make guacamole at home if you really want it.

Mexican food is one of the broadest, most diverse cuisines in the world, and much of that variety has to do with the incredible array of masa (corn) products, and sauces and moles, that define various regions.

At Chabela, they make all of their masa-based items in house, from blue-corn tortillas to huaraches. Those are thicker than tortillas, soft and pinched into a boat shape upon which meat or vegies are piled high.

Taco fillings and huarache toppings include two kinds of steak (skirt and rib-eye), mushrooms with epazote (a herb that tastes green and spiky in all the best ways), pork and a fantastic slow-cooked lamb rib barbacoa that’s gorgeously sticky and crunchy and lamb-y.

I was especially excited to see nopales (cactus), a staple of pre-Columbian Latino cooking that never lost popularity in many communities. I’ve had delicious nopales, slimy and underseasoned nopales, and everything in between, and I’m glad to report that the version at Chabela is fantastic: like a savoury kiwifruit meets a green bean.

There are two main courses on offer, and I recommend ordering both (this is an especially fun place for a crowd, and the menu begs for you to order widely). Chicken enchiladas are bathed in a lovely pipian sauce, made with toasted peanuts, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, as well as tomato, garlic and chilli. Enfrijoladas are filled with Yucatan-style cochinita pibil, a tender and long-cooked pork, and topped with a mellow refried black bean sauce.

This is the kind of cooking you might find in regional Mexico or in the homes of Mexican friends, but rarely have I seen anything close to it in Australian restaurants. It’s a heartening, almost miraculous-feeling treat to find it on High Street.

There are diversions from expectations here and there on this menu, some of which work and some of which don’t. I’ll have my corn poached with marrow any time, thank you, as Chabela does for its street corn (vegetarian and vegan versions are also available). On the other hand, the prawn aguachile tostada was more like a salad with a couple of prawns included; I think I prefer the more seafood-heavy version.

Service is both friendly and a little scattered, and wait times can be long – both for a table and for food – during peak hours. But this is Thornbury, and people are relaxed, and the mezcal and tequila cocktails ought to keep you happy while you wait (the mezcalita de jamaica, a deep purple hibiscus number, is a great gateway drink for the mezcal-curious).

But things are getting smoother every day, and the food – made with heart and care – is worth any wait you might encounter. That plus the abundance of good vibes make Chabela worthy of your love and attention, whether you’re around the corner or across the city.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.