Results tagged “mexican”

Papacitos, the wildly popular Greenpoint Mexican restaurant with the best vegetarian tacos in town, was the victim of a brazen robbery Saturday night. Co-owner Cody Utzman tells us that thieves broke into the establishment after it closed, hopping the courtyard fence and entering through the back. According to Utzman, the robbers smashed open the cash register and made off with a safe that had $10,000 inside, as well as the restaurant stereo and some employees' personal belongings. Police have dusted for fingerprints and are investigating the incident.

This week Frank Bruni at the Times reviews Double Crown, the new bi-level restaurant and bar in the East Village that, in his words, "ponders the glories of culinary cross-pollination, making a promise of 'British-Indio-Asian' fusion that sounds more like a threat, given that it’s a two-hyphen fusion and that one of the words bumping up against one of the hyphens is 'British.' And isn’t India in Asia? Note to self: bone up on world geography... Its take on British imperialism goes something like this: Sure, foreign lands were plundered and indigenous peoples oppressed, but think of the snacks!" Bruni bestows two stars for not taking "its pledged fusing too seriously or executing it too strenuously."

You know, Twittering isn't just good for making sure everyone knows you're watching Mad Men; it's also an effective tool for getting the word out on potential health risks. (You can thank us later, Thursday Style section.) For instance, we know from Sarah Lewitinn's Twitter that you may want to steer clear of a local Mexican franchise: "Got a bean burrito loco from San Loco on Stanton yesterday. It had a weird soapy taste and I got major food poisoning." Reached for comment, the Ultragrrrl elaborated, "I eat at SL all the time as well... but it tasted weird last night and I should've stopped eating. My body is showing signs of the flu but I'm puking so I'm confused."

    

Roadside tacos have become a common Williamsburg fixture, with Endless Summer parked on Bedford, El Diablo behind Union Pool, and the Authentic Mexican taco truck on the southern edge of McCarren Park. Now La Superior gives Mexican road food a stationary kitchen, dishing out teeny tacos high on flavor, homemade salsas, gorditas and flautas—both staples of the street—and much more.

Get yourself some popcorn, because this week Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni is taking the hammer to big shot media power-lunch nest Michael's. Turns out dinner there is an overpriced joke: "I thought Michael’s prided itself on produce. Then I had its appetizer of peekytoe crab with spears of white asparagus, which might as well have been spears of white wax for all the flavor they had....[Michael’s] certainly charges like a serious restaurant, levying a tariff of $35 for a lunchtime burger that’s not Kobe and doesn’t ooze foie gras. So it should perform at the level of a serious restaurant. These days, it usually doesn’t." He pauses to lavish some kind words on an omelet, but then it's back to bashing: "Shouldn’t a diner paying $38 for sea scallops get more than two, situated at opposite ends of a long hillock of sautéed snow pea leaves? Maybe that’s enough for a businessperson having a light lunch on a big expense account. For anyone else, it isn’t." Kill the rich! Zero stars!

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni relates his multiple visits to West Village Asian barbecue restaurant Bar Q, and by the sounds of it you’d never guess print media is in any kind of financial trouble – an initial trip with one group of ungrateful friends prompted so much "grumbling" he had to "unruffle their feathers" by being “especially profligate with the wine” on his paper’s expense account. The hangers-on who shared his second visit tasted a better side of Bar Q; after passing over chef Anita Lo’s “cloying” baby back ribs for her “gorgeous” steamed lobster, he decides that Lo’s “triumphs, more than her wobbles, stayed with me.” Two stars.

      

There’s been a lot of snarky ink spilled about how fast the ill-fated BarFry transformed into Cabrito. As is the case with many restaurants that fall under the scrutiny of bloggers, this new Mexican spot helmed by Dave Schuttenberg, whose pedigree includes stints at Fatty Crab and Craft, has already had the viability of its concept questioned. Blogger blathering aside, an initial visit shows Cabrito to be a high-end homage to a broad swath of Mexican food ranging from Pueblan street snacks like cemitas, tacos and huaraches, to the clearly American fish taco.

Hallo Berlin Express: A weird name and a weirder awning, but sometimes good food comes in weird packages (consider Masala Munch.) This new 30-seat joint on 9th Avenue near 50th Street is the sister of the bigger German eatery Hallo Berlin. Eating in Translation stuck his beak in when they opened this week, and walked away full of schnitzel, spaetzle, soup, and cucumber salad.

A few blocks south of the Lorimer L stop in Williamsburg there was once a beloved cafe, Hope and Union, which served divine pastries and stellar brunch in a cozy room with exposed brick walls and a tiny kitchen. A handful of name and management changes later, the space is occupied by Elote, a inexpensively priced breakfast-lunch-dinner-and-tequila drinking spot that retains all of the previous architectural elements but offers a Mexican menu. A full bar offers several dozen tequilas and the house's special cocktails, like the "dirty horchata," a variation of the milky rice-based drink often served in Latin America amped up with rum and vanilla liqueur.