On a cold night in February, the restaurant Cocina Consuelo in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan was, as it always is on Mondays, closed, but its tiny kitchen was a swirl of activity. “Of course I’m cooking on my birthday and my day off!” said the chef Karina Garcia as she assembled a strawberry tres leches cake topped with meringue and a flurry of fresh chamomile, mint, basil and dill for the friends and family who’d gathered to celebrate with her.
The evening marked not just Garcia’s 32nd birthday but also the six-month anniversary of the restaurant, which she opened with her husband, Lalo Rodriguez, 37, after parlaying a pandemic-era business selling tacos on Instagram into a supper club at their apartment a few blocks away. In a city where the success of a new business often hinges on publicity campaigns and TikTok kismet, Cocina Consuelo — named after Rodriguez’s maternal grandmother — has landed atop several best-of lists solely based on word of mouth. “We didn’t even have that strong a social media presence,” Garcia said. “I’m not sure how anyone heard of us.”
Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Harlem, she met Rodriguez — a native of Mexico who came to New York to study jazz guitar — when they worked together at a now-shuttered Upper East Side restaurant, she as a captain and he as a busboy. When she asked if she could join him on a trip back home to Puebla to try his grandmother’s cooking, she fell in love, both with the man and the cuisine he grew up eating. Today her food reflects that homemade Mexican sensibility, whether she’s serving it to diners at the restaurant or, as on this occasion, co-workers and family.
The attendees: The party was a family affair — by Garcia’s expansive definition of the word. So while her mother, Hilda Garcia, 66; sister, Teisis Sanchez, 40; and niece, Thairi Sanchez, 22, were there, as well as the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Yohualli, four restaurant employees (both current and former) also came to celebrate. Araceli Oropeza, 22, a fry cook who also washes dishes (and brought her husband along); Daniela López Amézquita, 35, who has since moved on to her dream job at the City University of New York’s Mexican Studies Institute but still swings by to pitch in; Salomé Sol, 20, who works the front of house; and Aaron Graham, 24, who was a regular customer before coming onboard, were joined by the double bassist Saul Ojeda, 28, and the pianist Wilson Woods, 23, who provided the entertainment before sitting down to eat.
The table: To create what she called a “communal and very abundant” atmosphere, Garcia scattered baguettes and green and red grapes along the table, with wine bottles, bright blue-and-yellow serving dishes and floral-painted taper candles interspersed among them. The warm, casual arrangement matched the restaurant’s décor, which was mostly inspired by Rodriguez’s grandparents’ home in Huejotzingo, especially its interplay of red brick and bold, patterned tiles. One funkier touch: a bedazzled portrait of the flamboyant Mexican singer Juan Gabriel given to the couple by the artist, Gabriel García Román, a customer turned friend.
The food: Bowls of guacamole sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and served with handmade tortillas were the first dishes to appear (and quickly disappear) from the table, along with a spicy shrimp-and-octopus aguachile with burnt chile lime sauce. Garcia used the party as an opportunity to try out some new ideas, including roasted beets topped with requesón cheese and roasted garlic and a whole branzino with homemade yuzu kosho paste. Two longtime favorites were also on the menu: marrow bones topped with beef birria and jalapeños stuffed with tuna confit — the latter adapted from Rodriguez’s grandmother’s recipe.
The drinks: The wines, from the restaurant’s own stock, were all from the Baja California region of Mexico. The evening’s sole red, a cabernet-sangiovese blend from Casa Magoni, was offered along with mission rosé from the Bichi winery and gris-de-gris rosé from the boutique Radicante label. Water was served in empty bottles of Mexican-style rum from the Brooklyn-based company Pa’lante.
The music: Ojeda, an old friend of Rodriguez’s from Mexico, recommended his friend Woods, who showed up early and played Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” and a few other numbers from the Great American Songbook. When Ojeda arrived, he introduced some Latin flair to the set list. (Rodriguez still plays around the city, and often at the restaurant, but wanted the night off.) Eventually, Garcia invited the musicians to join them at the table for dinner and fired up her own eclectic playlist, which included, among other things, songs by the Mexican pop-rock band Maná and the Italian singer-songwriter Gianluca Grignani.
The conversation: Several attendees remarked on the novelty of being a guest, all dressed up, at one’s own workplace. Later, as the tres leches disappeared, Garcia opened her presents, among them a black huipil (a traditional Central American short-sleeved tunic) embroidered with a portrait of Frida Kahlo and the words “Viva la Vida.” Drawn to its poppy colors, Yohualli quickly snatched it from her mother’s hands and claimed it as her own.
An entertaining tip: Many chefs, professional or otherwise, would feel slighted by critiques of their food — let alone their own birthday cake — but Garcia welcomed Amézquita’s assessment that the cream was too sweet. “If you want feedback like I do all the time,” she said, “you need to be honest.”
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