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a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.View my photography website.
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Tag Archives: Mexican food
Chef’s Table at Hecho en Dumbo: A Pictorial Tour
Mexican cuisine has come a long way in New York City in the last fifteen years, but the new tasting menu at Hecho en Dumbo is a sign that it hasn’t peaked yet. French-style service, technique and presentation meet Mexican food in this five-course meal, served at the bar in front of the open kitchen, which the restaurant recently transformed from just extra seating to a communal “chef’s table.”
Here’s a pictorial tour of the meal, which, with a few freebies thrown in for all the diners that night, topped out to seven courses for just $55. The setting may not be as fancy as a Boulud restaurant, but it’s an interesting window into the inner workings of a very busy kitchen. Chef Danny Mena, a Mexico City native who previously cooked at the Modern, manages a team of five, who quickly dish out small plates of roasted kid goat, wild striped sea bass, local beet salad and more. They’re as beautifully presented as French cuisine, made with artisanal ingredients contrasting in an inventive way, but the flavor is distinctly Mexican.
Rockaway Taco
There’s been a lot of press about the Rockaways lately – the surfing, the scene and the new food kiosks opening up on the boardwalk. But before you get distracted by the latest additions, don’t forget to hit up the original shack that made the Rockaways a food destination, because it’s still the best out there.
Started by David Selig in 2008 and chefed by Andrew Field, Rockaway Taco is a beachy, Montauk-esque takeaway joint across from abandoned houses and around the corner from a row of boarded up shops. There may be more Williamsburg weekenders in the Rockaways now, but this area still has a long way to go until total gentrification. Colorful little Rockaway Taco is a beacon of good food and good vibes, unskippable if you’ve already made it all the way out to the end of the A line. (more…)
Empellon
FOMO: fear of missing out. It’s the feeling that strikes whenever a much-hyped new restaurant opens and oh my god you might not get there while it’s still hot and everyone’s talking about it unless you get there right now. It’s the feeling that has gripped New York ever since foodie mania has slowly crept into the city’s zeitgeist – and anytime ramps are in season.
Given the amount of hoopla surrounding the opening of Alex Stupak’s new restaurant Empellón, diners should be forgiven for mobbing the place. A WD-50 alum takes on Mexican cuisine! In a cool new space in the West Village! This was in every imaginable media outlet online and off a couple weeks ago. Well, take a deep breath, because if you haven’t gotten there yet, you’re not missing out that much. (more…)
Yerba Buena West
A restaurant that serves food from a variety of different but interrelated countries is usually one you should avoid. Sushi and bibimbop and pad thai? How do you know which one the kitchen can actually do well? But if chef-partner Julian Medina at Yerba Buena West had stuck to just Mexican or Cuban food, the diners would have been the ones missing out on the variety of stimulating dishes and cocktails this place has to offer.
Not just Mexican or Cuban but also Argentinian, Peruvian and Chilean, the menu at Yerba Buena West touches down on ceviches, arepas, empanadas and grilled meat. Here everything feels a little less trendy and more grown up than the original Yerba Buena in the East Village. An antique bar frames one side of the room, and the vibrant blue lighting of the East Village spot has been ditched for the traditional look of cream-colored upholstered chairs, black and white tile floors, exposed brick and cream colored walls and minimal decorations. Senor Swanky’s this is not. (more…)
Hecho en Dumbo
If you’re opening a Mexican restaurant in New York, do you set out to please the general Tex Mex diner who expects chips and salsa to land on the table at the beginning of every meal? Or do you go the authentic route and offer things like cactus and rajas?
Hecho en Dumbo, which just arrived on the Bowery in the old Marion’s space, toes the line between the two schools of Mexican food, offering amazingly good, deeply spicy, traditional Yucatan cuisine—but also a number of fun cocktails and some tortilla chips for the type of person who says “Let’s go out for margs!” When “authentic” can mean not just “truly Mexican” but true to anyplace that has adopted Mexican food (like those Mission-style burritos at Dos Toros), this approach seems like the best route to success for a new style of Mexican restaurant. (more…)
Lunch: Dos Toros
No matter how much New Yorkers try to claim their city’s superiority in various areas—culture, music, fashion, 24-hour delivery of anything you desire—there is one category in which we must concede defeat: availability of good, authentic Mexican food. California has always had us beat in this department. It’s not that we are unaware of the problem. It’s just that, like many great quandaries of the day, we don’t know how to fix it.
Fortunately, two brothers from San Francisco, Leo and Oliver Kremer, arrived in the city determined to recreate Mission-style Mexican here in New York. The new Dos Toros taqueria near Union Sqare provides a much-needed upgrade to the Mexican food situation in Manhattan, which, unlike Brooklyn and Queens, hasn’t benefited from the recent uptick in good taquerias. (more…)
Viva
There’s not really a name for the 3pm Sunday meal, but a good one might be “linner.” By then you’ve probably tired of eggs but may be hard pressed to find a place that’s not still serving brunch. Go to a place where lunch and dinner food has always been part of the breakfast menu – like the West Coast-style, bare bones Mexican restaurant Viva in Red Hook.
If I were Mexican and homesick, I would come here for Viva’s fresh, amazingly good guacamole ($6) prepared with exactly the right mix of sweet white onions, cilantro, tomatoes, and rich avocado. (more…)
Cinco de Mayo Recipe: Michelada ZAMAS
Poor Mexico! Just when they were getting the drug cartels under control, along comes the swine flu. On this Cinco de Mayo, toast to their improved health – and the future health of tourism there – with a Michelada.
Translating literally as “my frozen beer,” the Michelada is hard to find outside of Mexico but extremely easy to make. On a recent trip to Tulum, I tried one at Zamas, a pretty beachside resort with a great open-air restaurant. The taste reminded me not just of a Bloody Mary but more specifically JG Mellon’s Bloody Bull, made with beef bouillon. (more…)
La Superior
One of the worst things about eating Mexican food in LA is coming back and eating it in New York. The New York version of Mexican food is almost sure to disappoint after you’ve had the vibrant, spicy food at a random hole-in-the-wall in an LA strip mall. Even the most successful NYC Mexican restaurants don’t source traditional ingredients like goat, and they get the cheese all wrong – Vermont cheddar is surely not a staple south of the border. Most Mexican food in New York is what Italian food was here in the mid-’80s: dumbed-down Mexican-American, not authentic Mexican.
That’s why it was such a relief to discover La Superior in Williamsburg after reading Pete Wells’ $25-and-under review. As soon as the first dishes landed, we knew: they got the cheese right.
La Superior’s requesón is a mild but cheesy cheese, fresh, with the consistency of a crumbly cottage cheese. Though it’s said you can use ricotta as a substitute, I don’t find the taste the same at all. (One close flavor you can sometimes find is Mexican Cotija cheese – not at high-end cheese stores, but at corner bodegas.) Here it is sprinkled on top of the flautas de pollo, which were very crisp and topped with bright, fresh greens and salsa that contrasted with the creaminess of the cheese.
Gorditas, typical Mexican street fare, are highly addictive little corn buns, split and stuffed with chorizo, lettuce, and more requesón. La Superior’s taste a little like huitlacoche, the surprisingly tasty weird corn fungus. If you want to spice up the gorditas some more, the green salsa served alongside does the trick.
The quesadillas also come street-style, more like heftier empanadas than a mere fried tortilla. But for me this amount of bread overwhelmed the filling.
Their tacos are amazing little delights, each one a separate burst of flavor. (This too is where so many other NYC Mexican places get it wrong – all Mexican dishes shouldn’t taste the same.) Clockwise from top, these are the camarón al chipotle (very spicy shrimp tacos), the carne asada (smoky grilled skirt steak), the carnitas (pork confit topped with sweet white onion), and the phenomenal rajas, roasted poblano pepper strips cooked with that fabulous cheese. This was a really intriguing combination. Usually you think of a creamy cheese as something to quell the spiciness of pepper, but when they’re cooked together, the cheese has the effect of drawing it out.
Alas, there may be a shortage of authentic Mexican food in New York, but if you can locate Cotija cheese, here’s a recipe for a Mexican salad for you. But if you’re going to La Superior, here’s your strategy:
- Arrive early (7-ish). If there’s a wait, you’ll have to wait in line – they don’t take cell phone numbers.
- BYOB! There’s a bodega around the corner with a good selection of beer.
- Prices are crazy cheap.
- Their idea of “decor” is a single string of colored lights. You’re not here for the romance.
- It’s much easier to get a table on busy nights as a party of two than as a larger party.
La Superior
295 Berry Street
Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718-388-5988
Mexican Poblano and Tomato Salad
Mexican Cotija cheese isn’t for sale at New York’s fancy cheese emporiums, but you can find it in some corner bodegas. If your hunt for authentic cheese is successful, here’s a recipe for a Mexican salad for you. It ran many years ago – in the LA Times, of course.
Mexican Poblano and Tomato Salad
4 poblano chiles
2 tomatoes, diced
1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried Mexican oregano, crumbled
3 tbsp. chopped cilantro
3 tbsp. lime juice
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 head butter lettuce
1/4 cup crumbled Cotija cheese
wedges of lime dipped in chile powder, for garnish
Roast the chiles on a gas burner or grill until charred all over. Place them in a Ziplock bag and close. Let them stand until cool, then slough off the charred skin. Core and seed them, then cut lengthwise into thin strips.
Toss the chiles with tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, cilantro, lime juice, and salt. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes. Arrange butter lettuce on four salad plates, top with pepper mixture, and sprinkle with Cotija cheese. Serve with lime wedges.
Serves 4.
Variation: If you can find requesón cheese, try substituting it for Cotija. Combine a 1/2 cup of requesón with the chili mixture, and instead of letting it all sit, heat it gently on the stove for about 5 minutes, until warmed through. Serve on top of cool butter lettuce, garnish with limes. Think of it as a salad version of La Superior’s rajas.
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