There’s something I meant to tell you last week, but I chickened out: I’m a Californian by birth! I moved to the city after college, and though it’s been several years, I’ve fallen for every Erewhon-coming-to-N.Y.C. prank, and still think of my hometown team when I turn down Doyers Street.
But being a Californian occasionally comes in handy. For one thing, my taco radar is spot on. That’s been especially useful this past year, when a host of taquerias seemed to suddenly appear, spawning ridiculously good Mexican restaurants all over the city. Finding respectable carnitas and barbacoa used to be a chore — now my friends debate which Brooklyn chefs make them best. It’s enough to make a Californian cry tears of joy.
It’s Wayne’s world, we’re just eating in it
Cramped New York kitchens give rise to all sorts of genius, spatially-aware cooking styles, like searing tortillas on an upside-down wok or baking bagels in a wood-fired pizza oven. At Wayne & Sons in the East Village, which is smaller than most studio apartments, the chef Oscar Hernandez warms his tortillas using a garden variety bagel toaster. Sit at the bar, which is also the kitchen — and watch them tumble over the conveyor belt.
The house specialty is the hard shell beef taco. (The recipe, from Hernandez’s family, has as much in common with Taco Bell as Una Pizza Napoletana does with Papa Johns.) His deeply seasoned picadillo needs little more than a zigzag of “smoky sauce” — mayonnaise and chipotle adobo — but I can never resist the bear-shaped salsa bottles sitting on every table. For a night of Texas-size proportions, pair one with an order of queso-drenched armadillo cheese fries and an extra-strong margarita. (The menu wisely limits the cocktail to one per customer.)
221 Second Avenue, Suite A (East 14th Street), Manhattan
Heads, shoulders, knees and …
For years, local taco lovers searched in vain for proper carnitas, the kind that leave you with a better understanding of barnyard biology and a sudden urge to learn Español. Now they’re showing up wherever they can fit: Brooklyn driveways, outside H-Mart and in the case of Tacos El Lobo, a parking space under the 7 Train in Jackson Heights.
El Lobo is known for carnitas made with the head, shoulder, stomach and other parts of the pig. (Part of the fun is watching through the window as the taqueros hack these recognizable parts to bits with a cleaver.) There’s no wrong way to eat them. But there’s one right way: doraditas de ceso. (“Doraditas” refers to deep-fried tortillas, and “ceso” means brain.) Carnitas Ramirez in the East Village serves a similar taco, but I prefer the noggins here, where they’re stuffed with extra shoulder meat, like a sandwich, for $3 more.
94th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Queens
97-77 Corona Avenue (98th Street), Queens
The F word
A bad fusion taco is worse than the sum of its parts (corn tortilla and … Korean pork belly?). But a good one? It makes you wonder how you ever ate cochinita pibil without fermented beans. Cariñito Tacos, a pop-up from Mexico City, makes a pretty good fusion taco. The “cochinita Thai” pairs rich pork belly with earthy achiote. And the sour “Issan” is a strong contender for taco of the summer, with mint and crackly chicharron. You could wash these tacos down with a beer — or you could lean in and order a glass of natural wine.
Not all of the experiments work: the pastrami taco with Chinese mustard was too much for me, especially at $9 each. But that’s easy to overlook when the vibes are this good. There’s an upstairs mezcal bar that thumps to life at night and an outdoor seating area that spills out onto the sidewalk. (My favorite table is a tall stack of Corona beer boxes.) The party is supposed to end in January, but now David Verástegui, an owner, is reconsidering: “We’d love to do something permanent,” he told me this week. “We’re working on that.”
86 University Place (East 11th Street), Manhattan
Before you go …
A few months ago, we sang the praises of Hellbender, a corner restaurant in Ridgewood, Queens, with a delicious Mexican American bent. Now you can make Hellbender’s “ethereal masa pancakes,” as Melissa Clark described them in her two-star review, at home. These breakfast beauties are barely sweet, with a lovely, crunchy exterior, and taste best drowned in your favorite maple syrup with a pat of cinnamon-dusted butter.
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