Quaker City Mercantile (formerly known as Gyro Worldwide) developed the concept, logo and advertising for Stephen Starr's El Vez.

It's one thing to name your new Mexican restaurant after a weird, not particularly convincing Mexican Elvis impersonator who looks a bit like Prince, but is nothing sacred to restaurateur Stephen Starr? The cad has slapped an image of Charo's face on all the bar stools! He has also put a revolving, gilded low-rider motorcycle above the bar, covered the booths in red and gold velvet, and hung hundreds of happy little Day of the Dead skulls in boxes above the booths at his new Philadelphia hot spot.

And yet chef Jose Garces turns out surprisingly creditable dishes: duck confit flautas with Cotija cheese and crema fresca, a pumpkin-seed-crusted pork chop with mole verde and pickled jalapenos, cactus-and-crab salsa, and spicy guajillo-chile-and-shrimp enchiladas. (The creamy guacamole, meanwhile, is churned out tableside by saucy senoritas.) El Vez's signature dessert is a flourless chocolate cake appropriately topped with peanut-butter custard, caramelized bananas, and roasted-banana-fudge-swirl ice cream. Sure, some of the food is too damned salty, which, duh, makes you crave more cocktails like the Cuchi-Cuchi (rum, pineapple puree and coconut milk). But it's hard not to enjoy the place for Starr's Philadelphia chutzpah and its East L.A. chachet. At least the owner did nothing to insult the great Ricardo Montalban.