You’ve probably already tasted Laura Perez’s cooking, even if you have never set foot in her new restaurant, Colorado’s Best Tamales.

Perez is better known as “the tamale lady.” For 20 years, she and a gang of family and friends have gone door to door selling her hot, fresh tamales at local business and farmers markets up and down the Front Range.

There is something about tamales that has always resisted walls. They are one of this city’s oldest snacks, brought by laborers from Colorado’s Hispanic counties in the first years of settlement. Old clippings from The Gazette note that Colorado Springs in the 1890s was speckled with hawkers selling their hot, husked goodies up and down the dusty downtown thoroughfares. But it wasn’t until 1908 that a “progressive” drugstore started selling chicken tamales to the more genteel denizens of the city who, The Gazette said, had been “deprived of this commodity because of the necessity of buying on the street.”

The same is now true for modern denizens. After decades as a nomadic vendor, Perez opened a restaurant at the urging of her family. And, good news, it serves much more than tamales.

The restaurant isn’t much to look at. It’s a strip mall slot just north of The Citadel. The main decoration is an assertive flatscreen often tuned to telenovelas. The air is sticky with fryer grease. But what comes out of the kitchen is beautiful.

Recipes here have changed little, if at all, from the days of turn-of-the-century husk hucksters. Everything is crafted from scratch. The enchilada sauce is made by hand. The warm, luscious corn and flour tortillas are handmade. The chips and trio of salsas on the table are handmade.

Perez serves Chihuahua-style dishes from the north of Mexico — essentially Tex-Mex minus the Tex. It’s a recognizable menu of enchiladas, chiles rellenos, tacos and, of course, tamales, as well as a few fish and shrimp dishes. In many ways it looks like a dozen other joints in that southeastern swath of town I call the Taco Triangle, where 90 percent of the authentic Mexican restaurants reside. There is nothing uncommon about the menu except that almost everything is perfect.

The carne asada enchiladas ($8) are a case in point: Four deliciously hand-pressed corn tortillas come wrapped around thin skirt steak that has been lightly seasoned and grilled until amber and crispy in a few spots, then chopped. It looked like a dozen dishes I’ve had within a mile of that spot. But one taste of the sweetly complex, deep-red sauce ladled over the plate, and I knew there had been no shortcuts. This was real enchilada sauce, made by toasting dried peppers, then seeding and chopping and simmering for hours with spices until only a sweet, smoky paste remains. Restaurants rarely bother to do it right like this any more. It takes too long. But Perez and family do.

Enchilada lovers also have a tart green tomatillo sauce option, full of heat from fresh serrano chilies. Both are fantastic.

So are the beans and rice that accompany nearly every dish. So often these throw-away sides suffer from too much salt and oil. Here the rice is light. Instead of pintos, the beans are creamy, buttery mayocobas, lightly seasoned so the nutty taste of the legume still comes through. This is not food all done up. Its just food done right.

Chiles rellenos ($8) here are made from broad Poblano chilies stuffed with just the right amount of soft mozzarella and cloaked in an eggy jacket perfectly crisped and golden brown from the fryer.

Each table gets three wonderful salsas — a rust-colored dried chili paste, a sweet pineapple-tomato salsa and a simple pico de gallo — all are terrific on chips or poured over a taco or relleno.

Do not miss the two kinds of molé served over shredded chicken ($9). The better-known brown molé, or molé Poblano — usually made from a long list of ingredients including dried chilies, toasted tortillas and a hint of chocolate — is earthy, bittersweet and as rich and multilayered as a slow-cooked French bourguignon. Less common in Colorado is the green molé, or pipian verde — a smooth blend of toasted pumpkin seeds, tomatillos, fresh chilies, Mexican herbs and garlic. It’s hot, a little sweet, nutty and simply wonderful.

Perez also has treats that don’t make it to the menu, such as perfectly crispy little pastries, called empanaditas, filled with apple or guava paste.

And, of course, there are enchiladas that range from devilishly hot to mild. All are worthwhile and come in to-go packs.

The dreary location has not attracted the customers the family had hoped, and a family member said Perez is not sure she can keep the restaurant open. So go there. And do it soon.

COLORADO’S BEST TAMALES4 STARS out of 5(Name’s an understatement)Address: 3618 Citadel DriveContact: 531-0626, coloradosbesttamales .comEntrees: $5-$15Hours: 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Sundays, closed MondaysVegetarian: YesAlcohol: NoCredit cards: Yes

Colorado’s Best Tamales, 3618 Citadel Drive, serves six kinds of tamales and a variety of homemade northern Mexican dishes, including two kinds of molé sauces. Photo by CAROL LAWRENCE, THE GAZETTE