Serious Eats: New York - Mexican Eats

Mexican Eats: Williamsburg's Antojitos Mexicanos Brims Over With Tripe

2013-01-08T20:30:00Z

[Photograph:s Scarlett Lindeman]

Graham Avenue in Williamsburg may be named Via Vespucci for the Italian flair of its northern reaches, but head south and the atmosphere veers towards another stripe. There's cheap cuchifrito joints, discount shoe stores, and corner preachers calling out in Spanish. Antojitos Mexicanos represents the Mexican side of the Latin American sector, a festive, heavily decorated restaurant with red tablecloths and an old school jukebox in the back. Families from the neighborhood tuck into plates of puerco en adobo ($8.50) with fluffy rice and refried beans. Solo diners look to stabilize their centers with pozole ($6.50).

Antojitos does not actually specialize in their namesake—there are tacos, tacos dorados, chalupas, and huaraches, but no other inventive corn masa made snacks to whet the appetite. But there are tacos placeros ($3.50), oversized tortillas holding rice, jalapenos, and nicely boiled eggs, with nary a grey yolk ring in sight. The chalupas ($5.50) are especially nice, flash-fried in packs of four. They are swiped with fiery red and green salsas, and anointed with a few spare crumbles of cheese, diced onion, and a spot of crema.

Also popular is the pancita ($8), a steaming bowl of rusty red broth with curls of tripe that catches pockets of red in their honeycomb webbing. The broth is rich and porky, sweetened with tomato and spiced with chile de arbol alongside doses of lime and crisp sweet white onion to temper the funk. A roll-up of warm tortillas wait on the side. If you can't stomach the stomach, there's a just-as-spicy chicken soup that also nurses New Years-sized hangovers.

Antojitos Mexicanos

107 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11206 (map)
718-384-9076

About the author: Scarlett Lindeman wears many hats as a food-writer, recipe editor of Diner Journal, a food/arts quarterly, and a doctoral student of sociology. E-mail her at scarlett.lindeman@gmail.com.

Mexican Eats: 10 Best New York Mexican Dishes of 2012

2012-12-28T19:00:00Z

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Mexican Eats: 10 Best New York Mexican Dishes of 2012

For every skeptic proclaiming the deficiencies in our city's Mexican food offerings, there's a champurrado cart doling out early-morning cups of warmth, a pot of birria to soothe ennui, and a cook tending to salsa, to match. If you doubt the credibility, well, then you're just not looking hard enough.

It's been a great year for Mexican food, and as the community develops, second and third generations settle, and more chefs become inspired by the diversity of the cuisine, it can only get better. Here are some of the best dishes of the year, ten that would make even the most fervent disbeliever reconsider.

Salsa Mora at Tacos Morelos
Gorditas at New Mex Deli
Tacos de Suadero from Taqueria Izucar
Torta de Tamale at Alimentos Saludables
Sabor a Mexico's Pozole Verde
Beet Margarita at Gran Electrica
Al Pastor Tacos at Taco Mix
Enchiladas Dona Blanca at Casa Enrique
Torta Pumas at Tortas Neza
Chile Relleno at Tulcingo del Valle

About the author: Scarlett Lindeman wears many hats: a food-writer, recipe editor of Diner Journal, a food/arts quarterly, and a doctoral student of sociology. E-mail her at scarlett.lindeman@gmail.com.

Mexican Eats: Three Burritos Worth Celebrating for Burrito Day

2012-12-18T20:30:00Z

Downtown Bakery's Breakfast Burritos. [Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

Back in 1983, a DJ at an independently run Los Angeles radio station, KXLU 88.9FM, declared December 19th as "Burrito Day in LA," a day to celebrate the spicy, meat-filled, foil-wrapped tubes that the citizens were so fond of. Two years later, the then-mayor Tom Bradley officially proclaimed December 19th as a city-wide holiday, so inhaling bean and cheese burritos became not just lunchtime, but civic duty.

New York does not have an official burrito day, nor the widespread and century-long relationship with burritos like the West coast, but we're slowly gaining traction. Do not let our burrito demographics, or lack thereof, hang your head in shame! Let's start our own Burrito Day! Today! December 18th! One day ahead of LA because the sun rises in the East, doesn't it? Find the good ones, buy one for a friend, and let's start our own tradition. Here are three that make for good celebrating.

Downtown Bakery's Breakfast Burritos

This kind of early morning burrito ($5 to $7) is a rare breed in this city: a breakfast of softly scrambled eggs, refried black beans, and cheese folded into a stretchy flour tortilla, so you can ditch the fork. Read more »

Downtown Bakery

69 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10003 (map)
212-254-1757

Fast and Fresh Burrito Deli's Chorizo Burrito

The neon oil that leaks from the foil-wrapped package is a good sign: the chorizo burritos ($6.50), bulging with fine crumbles of heavily spiced sausage and drifts of rice are barely encased by the springy edible wrapping. Every component is just moist enough. Read more »

Fast and Fresh Burrito Deli

84 Hoyt Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (map)
718-802-1661
fastandfreshburrito.com

La Espiguita's Cecina Burrito

There are good impulses at this tiny Astoria taqueria. The burritos are so huge they make Mission-style look anemic. $6 gets you a gigantic specimen, wrapped in foil, stuffed with fluffy orange rice, a shmear of beans, the perfect swatch of sour cream, and seared chippings of salted beef, cecina. Hold the lettuce!

La Espiguita

32-44 31st Street, Astoria, NY 11106 (map)
718-777-5648

Mexican Eats: Taqueria El Paisa, an Electrified Al Pastor

2012-12-11T20:30:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

On a sharp corner in Bushwick's Southern row is Taqueria El Paisa, a tiny triangle of a taqueria. Just three stools, a circumscribed menu, a walk-up counter, and some of the best al pastor tacos in the city, ($2.50, or 3 for $6). Al pastor, a shawarma-style rotating spit that cooks stacks of meat from the outside in, was introduced to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants. The meat is shaved off into delectable shreds, then piled into a tortilla, swapped in for the pita.

Mexican cooks also exchanged chile-rubbed pork for the traditional lamb and impaled a fresh pineapple at the top of the "trompo," the spinning top, to slowly baste the meat with its roasting juices. Al pastor is a common filling for tacos and burritos throughout the city, leaving its telltale mark of vivid drippings of orange grease and chunks of canned pineapple. Too many kitchens go wild with the fruit, turning out tacos that taste like Hawaiian punch. And, if it hasn't made rounds on the spit, it's not real al pastor. Fortunately this is not the case at El Paisa.

I can tell you that there are supple lengua tacos ($2.50), a rough red salsa, and super cheap cemitas ($6) at Taqueria El Paisa, but that would be beside the point. You're there for the layers of al pastor, which rotate on the spit as mesmerizing as a lava lamp. The smoking exterior is trimmed from the mass, showered with diced onion and cilantro, and piled into a warm, doubled, tortilla. The pork is crispy and charred, so concentrated it tastes almost like another animal. Every juicy, crunchy morsel is the clamored-after corner piece, warm with chile, a buzz of citrus, a faint tropical sweetness, and just enough fat to tie it together. The warm, bland, tortilla buffers the electricity. With so many overlapping currents of flavor, there's no room for salsa—a spritz of lime is the only sane addition.

Taqueria El Paisa

298 Irving Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11237 (map)
718-456-2095

Mexican Eats: The Other Shade of Pozole at Sabor a Mexico

2012-12-04T20:15:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

From the blond, to the brown, to the broths tinged with red, to those as clear as consomme, it seems as thought there are more than fifty shades of pozole found throughout Mexico. Far from the glitzy coastal resorts on the Pacific, through the mountainous valleys of the Southern state of Guerrero, is Tlapa de Comonfort, Tlapa, for short, where an uncommon bowl of pozole reigns. The family that operates Sabor a Mexico, a matchbox of a restaurant in the East Village, is from Tlapa, and they serve their hometown version in a deep ceramic bowl, a steaming pozole verde ($12.95) in an appetizing shade of olive green.

There's an array of condiments on the side: tortilla chips, flakes of Mexican oregano that crush like autumnal leaves under the thumb, lime wedges, diced white onion, julienned radish, finely chopped jalapeno for a green spark, and half of an avocado, crosshatched and ready to tumble into the soup.

The soup is really wonderful on its on, deeply seasoned and savory, with a rich body from stock fortified with pork bones. A purée of toasted green pumpkin seeds (pepitas) enrich the soup and release a sheen of nutty oil that rests on the surface. Tender kernels of hominy add heft, along with large shreds of lean pork meat. Dark green bits of pulverized hoja santa float throughout the bowl; the heart shaped, velvety green leaves smell of licorice and sassafras, adding depth to the steam.

In My Mexico, Diana Kennedy mentions a similar green pozole served at midday on Thursdays, only. Luckily, at Sabor a Mexico, you can have it any time you like.

Sabor a Mexico Taqueria

160 1st Ave., NY 10009 (map)
212-533-4002

About the author: Scarlett Lindeman wears many hats a food-writer, recipe editor of Diner Journal, a food/arts quarterly, and a doctoral student of sociology. E-mail her at scarlett.lindeman@gmail.com.

Mexican Eats: Don't Scoff the Hard Shell at Castro's in Clinton Hill

2012-11-27T20:15:00Z

[Photograph: Scarlett Lindeman]

As one of the oldest Mexican restaurants in Brooklyn, Castro's is a weathered Clinton Hill stalwart, a late-night spot for Pratt students with a bustling delivery service. Inside, the cooks are magic to watch. Assembling orders at a rapid pace, spreading beans onto Mexican pizzas, depositing pickled jalapenos onto heroic platters of nachos ($8), and plops of sour cream on sizzling fajita plates ($11-13.50). They charge through orders at lightening speed, like a fast-forwarded sports clip, but in real time.

The menu is expansive, featuring the scope of Mexican American cuisine: hulking smothered burritos that you eat with a knife and a fork ($8-$13), chicken pipian in a ground green pumpkin seed mole ($11), and a decent tortilla soup ($6.50), with square-inch chunks of soft panela cheese that chew like bubblegum.

Here the tacos dorados ($2.50) are not rolled flautas but true American -style tacos that have evolved far from their origins. Most are familiar with the tilted head to the left, the warm crunch, and the orange grease that dribbles down the wrist. On the line, there's a row of golden fried tortillas, clamped-into their U shape by a metal cage and dunked into the fryer. A cook sets the tacos into vertical plastic holders, three a row, filling them with mild, minerally ground beef, cold iceberg lettuce, shreds of industrial cheese, and a pico de gallo divorced of heat. It's a taco that's only the faintest bit "Mexican," one that tastes resoundingly of childhood, expertly assembled by Mexican cooks for whom the nostalgia doesn't register, yet everyone can enjoy.

Castro's

511 Myrtle Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11205 (map)
718-398-1459

Mexican Eats: Gran Electrica Makes for Grand Meals

2012-11-20T19:45:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

Dinner seems to come early when it's already pitch black by 5 p.m. But Gran Electrica in Dumbo is ready for the darkness, with candles flickering and a kaleidoscope of dishes to light up the table. Some highlights: a radiant green aguachile of raw scallop and cucumber, in a sluice of cilantro, lime, and mint, punctuated with drops of golden olive oil; a lake of scarlet mole, shimmering and burnished, the meshing of many toasted chiles; and a stunningly red beet margarita, like a fresh juice from the corner juicer for ascetic mornings of reparation, earthy and barely sweet.

Gran Electrica opened earlier this year, one door down from the new Grimaldi's, owned by the team behind Colonie and Governor, where elegant preparations of cod froth, tapicoa pearls, and smoked tomato water reigns. Here you'll find swiss chard simmered with cream, tangled with strips of roasted pepper and cubes of skin-on potato, an arresting filling for a taco (2 for $7).

The torta ahogada ($13), the French Dip of Mexican cuisine, is a pork-stuffed sandwich soaked in a tomato-chili broth; it's served with plastic gloves on the side to aid the assault. It takes firm resolve to share the quesadilla, the masa translucent in sections, saturated by the crumbled chorizo, quesillo cheese, and potato inside ($10). Is the guacamole better than the mash served at under-the-7-train taquerias? I'd say yes. Is it worth the $13? That's for your wallet to decide.

This is Brooklyn, so the tortillas are pressed in-house, the cocktails change with the season, and they've gone out of their way to source the delicious Corona Familiar in brown squat 32 ounce bottles, which is about the only thing that can dampen the heat of their grapefruit spiked habeñero salsa.

Not everything works. The gorditas are far too crisp and stuffed with glass-like shards of chicharron. Some dishes need the guidance of more learned hand, the wisdom of generations that would know what step the mole passed over, what is missing from the pozole.

But the menu shifts occasionally, so there's always a different fish preparation, like the tostada de jaiba ($13), with sweet shreds of peekytoe crab meat, or a new taco to try. Clamorous herbs and brutish vegetables that are so often shunned get treated nicely here. On their opening menu they served a torta de huazontle, a seasonal green with miniscule broccoli-like beads that have to be plucked from woody stems. It's a tedious plant that most taquerias won't touch, transformed into a simple and earnest dish, a pleasure to eat.

Gran Electrica

5 Front Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 (map)
718-852-2789
granelectrica.com

Mexican Eats: The Chile Relleno at Tulcingo Del Valle

2012-11-13T20:15:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

Generally speaking, any combination of cheese-stuffed, battered, and deep-fried is going to taste pretty good. This is the paradox of the chile relleno, of which many of which are dismal. Too often they're sodden bricks that taste like they were fried weeks before, then grabbed out of the corner of the fridge when someone finally orders one and re-saturated in a fryer for a quick warm up. There are leagues of difference between a run-of-the-mill chile relleno, however, and the delicate pleasure of the one dished out by Tulcingo del Valle, a Mexican restaurant in Hell's Kitchen.

The Gonzales family has been running the show for eleven years, originally as a tidy bodega which morphed throughout the years into a full-service restaurant. They still go back every year to the Tulcingo Valley, a mountainous region two hours south of Puebla, to pick up supplies: wild Mexican oregano that clarifies the pozole; the dried chilies that their relatives cultivate; and a suitcase of spices for their mole paste, for which they shirk the blender and use a hand-cranked mill.

You can taste the effort in the tomato sauce that drapes over the chile relleño ($12.95), a base of charred tomatoes, a bit of ground chipotle, and a sneaky pinch of cinnamon is cooked down with onion and peppers. The poblano pepper is roasted and peeled, stuffed with cheese, and dipped into a frothy egg white batter and then fried, slowly, until the cheese has time to return to soft curds. The tomato sauce is poured over the fritter, which is as tender as a River Cafe omelet, with sweet layers of vegetal pepper and oozy cheese. It has a creeping kind of heat, soft and stealthy, that tiptoes through the dish. The chile relleño is a house favorite, the menu's home base. Start there, and traverse, next time.

Tulcingo Del Valle

665 10th Avenue #1, New York, NY 10036 (map)
212-262-5510
tulcingorestaurant.com

Mexican Eats: Austin Comes to Brooklyn at Güeros

2012-11-06T16:15:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

Down a Prospect Heights side street, spitting distance from the Brooklyn S line shuttle, is Güeros, a taco spot from the owners of Dram Shop, a bar in Park Slope. It's a true neighborhood spot, with benches outside and wooden stools and tables within, and a mixed crowd lingering over fresh lime margaritas ($6) pulled from a dispenser and Lone Star beers ($4), a cheap, sweet brew from Texas that garners rabid fans.

One of the owners hails from Austin, where flour tortillas and cheese on everything are de rigeur. They do make stellar flour tortillas in house; the corn ones come from Nixtamal. Many other ingredients are procured well, from grass-fed beef to organic eggs, and they've established a composting and oil recycling program. All the building blocks are there, laid out and ready, but the assembly can't quite put it together.

The housemade chips, thick and crunchy, are better naked than dipped into under seasoned, lime-less guacamole ($6). Beans and greens ($3), a cup of soupy black beans, are fine but contain no evidence of collards. Too many of the tacos are heaped with chunks of cold tomato, lettuce, cheese, and doused in dressing, as if sent through a gauntlet of a salad bar.

Small pearly fried shrimp ($4) had lost their breading on the way to the tortilla, and were squirted with both chipotle mayo and cilantro cream. The fried chicken taco ($3.50) was a nest of romaine, the chicken buried underneath. The novelty of fried avocado ($3.50), in a taco with fried pickled jalapeno, couldn't shield it from the sharp clang of Cabot cheddar cheese.

Roasted vegetable and fried avocado tacos.

The roasted vegetable taco ($3) with refried beans, roasted zucchini, green salsa and pickled red onion worked well, and the housemade green chorizo, loose crumbles scattered with hunks of skin-on potato, was a delight—chili-forward, with a scattering of herbs and a flicker of warm spice. Braised brisket with strips of rajas had a straightforward meatiness, but wept grease.

Green chorizo and brisket tacos.

You can't talk about Austin without mentioning breakfast tacos, which Güeros only serves on the weekend until 4 p.m. Their warm flour tortillas folded around softly scrambled eggs with bits of beans, chorizo, or rajas, is a plenary breakfast. Those tacos make a worthy plea for more breakfast tacos in NYC, and for Güeros to offer them more often.

Güeros

605 Prospect Place Brooklyn, NY 11238 (map)
718-230-4941
http://guerosbrooklyn.com

Mexican Eats: Where to get your pan de muerto for Dia de los Muertos

2012-10-30T18:45:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

Though Dia de los Muertos, which begins on Thursday and extends to Friday, may be associated with Halloween with its parades, costumes, and skull imagery, the Mexican holiday, a joyous two-day memorial service to celebrate the loved and lost, has little to do with a candy free-for-all. Altars are built, relatives converge, sugar skulls are set in place, and favorite food is prepared. Leave the Snickers bars for the neighbors; tamales, candied pumpkin, and pan de muerto, a soft yeasted sweet bread, are the preferred treats.

Panaderia La Espiga Real, a small Mexican bakery in Sunset Park, has been baking pan de muerto ($1.50-$3) all month. Entering the store releases a wave of olfactory euphoria of warm scented air, sweet, proofing rolls and baking breads. Stand and inhale. In the back, racks of sheet-trays are holding baked goods. Pull out trays from their slots to get a better view. There are conchas, of course, with their crackly sugar shells, cinnamon sugar-dusted monas, orejas shellacked with syrup, and chilindrinas stuck together with strawberry jam. The golden rolls topped with sesame seeds that are the building blocks for so many of the neighborhood restaurants' cemitas, are being tucked away into a box for delivery.

But you're here for pan de muerto, an eggy, fluffy bread, usually flavored with orange zest, cinnamon, or anise seed, that is demarcated by its decorative cross of bones baked into the top. The helmet-sized mounds are brushed with beaten egg so they emerge from the oven, bronzed and shiny. It's an agreeable bread, soft and yeasty, that you can leave on the counter all day and tear hunks from.

On your way out, the glass case up front holds a flan ($1.50), turned out onto a plastic cafeteria tray and cut into wedges like a cake. It's an incredible version of an everyday dessert; they've managed to turn a flat of eggs into sweet silk. Drag a forkful through the syrup of burnt sugar pooling at the bottom. One for you, another for a lost soul.

Panaderia La Espiga Real

5717 5th Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11220 (map)
718-439-7539

Mexican Eats: Tacos Matamoros II, The Sequel

2012-10-23T19:00:00Z

[Photographs: Jake Lindeman]

Tacos Matamoros, a big wood-paneled restaurant with extended families tearing through platters of bistec encebollado, is a Sunset Park classic. It's built for long Saturday lunches of sopa de camarones and rowdy quinceñera celebrations. But when the five-piece Mariachi band and the squealing babes are likely to spark a migraine, Tacos Matamoros II is a suitable alternative.

Chalupas.

The Matamoros owners have reproduced their menu at a smaller space down 5th Avenue. It's a narrow cafeteria with antique movie posters on the walls and backlit picture menus overhead. There are social workers on their lunch breaks munching tostadas ($3) and equally crunchy flautas de papa ($7), rolled tacos deep-fried with centers of roughly mashed potato. Chalupas ($5), little tortillas coated in salsa, are also fried, but quickly, not to crisp but to soften, then dunked in red and green salsas and piled with rich crema, cheese, and diced onion.

Chilaquiles.

If you root for the crunchy camp of chilaquiles, shunning the spoonable mush that most taquerias serve, Matamoros is your gal. The chilaquiles estilo Matamoros ($8) are chips doused in their house mole, the sweet and smoky sauce countered by cheese, crema, and onion, like a plate of nachos left to soften, then mined with a fork.

Costillas en adobo.

There are larger plates of mole, grilled pork chops, and costillas en adobo; fat, meaty ribs ($11), smothered in a tomato-based adobo with flickerings of garlic, ancho chili, and clove, a milder take that you could spoon feed to an infant. Tacos ($1.50) are tiny things, with over a dozen meats to choose from. Carne asada, carnitas, and suadero taste of good meat, but need added pep from a squeeze of lime and salsa. The watery house tomato version, will do nothing for you. Reach instead for the small bowl of thinly-sliced sweet white onion that is lightly-pickled and sprinkled with oregano, an oddly refreshing and kind gesture.

Tacos Matamoros II

5717 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11220 (map)
718-439-5647

Mexican Eats: Happy Hour at Fonda East Village

2012-10-16T18:15:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman

For a man operating an under-the-radar Mexican restaurant out in Brooklyn, Roberto Santibañez carries a trunk of accolades. He's an award winning chef, a cookbook author, and the former culinary director of the Rosa Mexicano empire. His newest restaurant, Fonda in the East Village, an offshoot of the original Park Slope location, has ruby walls, gothic trimmings, and a great happy hour, a peepshow of what the menu has to offer.

The list of botanas (all $6) are snacks to nibble with a margarita in hand, like tiny, achiote-marinated pork tacos and quesadillas with mushrooms and cheese. The house margarita, the Rosita, is more tart than the classic lime cocktail, made sour with hibiscus flowers. Some of the dried petals are crushed to a powder with sugar and salt, to line the rim of the glass. There is also Negra Modelo ($4) on tap.

There are flautas, rolled chicken tacos fried to a shattering crispiness, one drenched in red salsa, the other, green, painted with lines of crema. And, sopes, small rounds of masa filled with a paste of black beans, a drizzle of salsa, and a heap of sliced romaine, one of the few instances where the lettuce is merited, a crunchy, sweet contrast to the savory puree underneath.

Guacamole, made to order in a molcajete, is served with both chips, and a basket of handmade, warm tortillas that smell of a heaven paved with ears of corn. Moist and delicate, with a substantial chewiness, they taste resoundingly of sweet toasted corn. A fine French baguette would seem crude in their presence. A spoonful of the guacamole, wrapped up in one of the tortillas with a sprinkle of the smoked pasilla salsa on top, and you have what all vegan food aspires to achieve, perfection without any animal pain.

You might just end up staying for dinner.

Happy Hour, Fonda, East Village
Monday 5 pm.. to 10 p.m.
Tuesday-Friday 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturday-Sunday 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Fonda East Village

40 Avenue B New York, NY 10009 (map)
212-677-4096
fondarestaurant.com

About the author: Scarlett Lindeman is a cook, food-writer, and recipe editor of Diner Journal, a food/arts quarterly. E-mail her at scarlett.lindeman@gmail.com.

Mexican Eats: Quick and Easy Fast Food Stylings at El Aguila

2012-10-09T19:15:00Z

[Photographs: Scarlett Lindeman]

There are dozens of Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles like Spanish Harlem's El Aguila, with its white, yellow, and red color motif, neon menu, and it's assembly line of ingredients. It's the classic In N Out framework applied to the taqueria. Places like King Taco, Tito's Tacos, and Burrito King, may just be Mexican inspired fast food, but I've seen heated social scuffles take place over the superiority of a places' lengua burrito. But this is New York, and we are merely lucky to have El Aguila, a 24 hour stark white outpost on 116th Street, with another location thirteen blocks downtown, and another in New Jersey.

Conchas.

The menu is streamlined: tacos ($2.50), tortas ($5.99), burritos ($6.99), and tamales ($1.50). A corner of the restaurant is reserved for its panaderia, with speed-racks of conchas still warm from the oven and glazed pastries filled with strawberry jam and cream cheese. At the center of the room is an elevated box of a bakery station where you can watch a man fill rectangles of dough with bright yellow pineapple preserves as you wait for your tacos.

What El Aguila lacks in finesse it makes up for in speed. Meats for tacos are plunked onto the flat top, reheated and slid down the line for a quick adornment of cilantro and onions, or corn kernels, tomatoes, cheese, and scallions. Everything is infinitely customizable, here. The tacos are large, under-seasoned, and quite dry; the braised meats, barbacoa and carnitas trump the carne asada and grilled chicken. The burritos are large, and that's about it.

Milanese de pollo torta.

The tortas, made from fresh, house-made rolls, are split down the middle, spread with mayonnaise, and secured to the flat-top, which must be cranked to 11. In 30 seconds the bun has formed a golden crust, a toasted mantle to lay swatches of avocado, Oaxacan cheese, rings of sweet white onion, a shmear of pinto beans, pickled jalapenos, lettuce, and a thick cutlet of chicken, milanesa de pollo. The bread is soft and chewy on the outside, toasted at the middle, and the chicken, thicker than most, still juicy from the fryer. Any misdeeds are ameliorated by the condiment bar, which offers four Crayola-hued salsas to choose from.

El Aguila

137 E 116th St New York, NY 10029 (map)
212-410-2450
elaguilanewyorkrestaurant.com

Mexican Eats: Barrio Chino's Impenetrable Mole

2012-10-02T19:00:00Z

Navigating the arena of diners at Barrio Chino, a one-room, perpetually-packed Mexican restaurant in the Lower East Side is a little like a game of Tetris. There will be sliding out stools and shuffling around corners, scooting sideways to reach your perch. The paper lanterns that dangling overhead match the soft glow of dusk, which pours in through the French doors, open to the street. It's a bit of a scene in here, with a long list of names to add yours to before heading around the corner for a drink.

Back at the Barrio, everyone sips on tart grapefruit margaritas ($11). If you like painfully spicy beverages, the habeñero version, made with house-infused tequila, is a blitz to the throat. Groups of girls in heavy eye makeup pick at their sea bass ceviche, cured with lime and tomatoes ($10). The chips ($3) come with three different salsas: a roasted jalapeno and tomatillo salsa, flecked with bits of char; a blackish-red salsa made with dried pasilla chilies; and a bright red one, with chili de arbol, roasted garlic, and tomato. Hidden behind a golden wall is the galley kitchen which churns out tacos, enchiladas, and salads served on cheap, plastic Chinese plates, mostly to aid the drinking.

That is, unless you order the mole. A family recipe, ladled over chicken enchiladas ($15), it's a thick and grainy purée, dark and slow-moving. It's a different breed than many of the moles in town, barely spicy, heavy on the sesame, peanut, and cinnamon, with bitter notes and sweetness that tug at both ends. It'll take two to finish and two rounds of drinks. When the last pools of sauce are wiped away, a dragon emerges at the bottom of the plate, an auspicious sign of success.

Barrio Chino

253 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002 (map)
212-228-6710
barriochinonyc.com

About the author: Scarlett Lindeman is a cook, food-writer, and recipe editor of Diner Journal, a food/arts quarterly. E-mail her at scarlett.lindeman@gmail.com.

Mexican Eats: Esquites and Gorditas on the Street in Sunset Park

2012-09-25T19:15:00Z

[Photographs: Jake Lindeman]

The cart at 45th and 5th in Sunset Park doesn't have a name, though it would be incredibly hard to miss from it's rainbow beach umbrella stretching over a line-up of equally colorful juices. There's a lemon lime agua fresca, a brown tamarind juice, creamy horchata, and a jamaica juice, blood red and tart from dried hibiscus flowers. All are super-concentrated with blocks of ice bobbing at their centers, ready to be ladled into Styrofoam cups and handed to those strolling the avenue and in need of a drink.

Elote.

The stand is a family enterprise, from Morelos, Mexico, and they've been operating in the same spot for seven or eight years. The sons in Yankee caps, as comfortable in Brooklyn slang as their native Spanish, are anchored to the corner by their mom's home cooking and their dad's juicing. The menu is short, just empanadas, gorditas, elotes, and esquites, snacks as essential to the street as paved concrete and parking tickets.

Esquites.

Here, the elotes ($2), mayonnaise-slathered ears of corn on sticks doused in powdered cheese and chili are not as good as the esquites ($2.50), which have all the pleasures of the elote but without the need for dental floss. Corn kernels are cut from the cob, the milky starch scraped into the mix, and then simmered into a sort of cream-less creamed corn. It becomes a simple soup, with leaves of epazote folded in, which loses its pungency from the cooking, turning soft and mild like spinach.

Gorditas.

The gorditas ($2.50) are corn disks filled with shredded chicken and tomato, or soft and sticky chicharrón. Plucked from the fryer, the thin crust of masa shatters like a flaky croissant; underneath the layer of soft, chewy corn, the filling is almost moot. The rounds are split open, piled with lettuce, avocado, crema, and a green sauce that leaves the mouth with a lasting burn to relish long after you've demolished the gordita, like a rough and fleeting kiss.

No-Name Cart

Corner of 45th Street and 5th Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn (map)

About the author: Scarlett Lindeman is a cook, food-writer, and recipe editor of Diner Journal, a food/arts quarterly. E-mail her at scarlett.lindeman@gmail.com.