New York Restaurants by Area – Page 24 – Writing With My Mouth Full

El Quinto Pino

401 West 24th Street off Ninth Avenue
212/206.6900
$83 for two, with a lot of drinks, with tip
â™¥ â™¥

Bar Jamon was the last loud and crowded bar I fell in-love with here in New York City. That was more than five years ago. I’ve been to many good bars since then, but only El Quinto Pino has reminded me that all I need is good wine with some good company to make me completely content and happy. Add a small selection of good tapas in the mix and you’d have to push me out the door to get me home.

The anchovies in olive oil and the warm chickpeas with spinach reminded me of eating in the boqueria in Barcelona. Simple dishes like them don’t need big introductions. I liked the braised pork sandwich better than the breaded cod, but the pig’s ears salad, cold and crunchy, was the one that stood out. The deep-fried pork belly cracklings are dangerously addictive. The uni panini might just be the perfect tiny sandwich, spiked with a little horseradish to surprise your palate.

There are no tables at El Quinto Pino and you’d be lucky to get a spot at the bar before 11pm. People are in a very good mood, though, and the vibe is infectious. Matt, the bartender, always makes me feel special, calling me by name as soon as I situate myself at the bar. I’ve witnessed girls and boys alike giggle when he comes up to them. Once, I sat next to an annoying customer who complained about eating sardines when he expected anchovies, and the manager appeased him with a free dish and a glass of wine. My last three visits have been accompanied by several glasses of Cantabria 2003, and even when it’s most crowded, I’ve never had to wait for my glass to be refilled. At El Quinto Pino, I can have another, and then another.

Update: I know have a case of the Cantabria wine from El Quinto Pino’s wine store, Tinto Fino.

Cafe El Portal

174 Elizabeth Street between Spring and Kenmare
212/226.4642
$32 for two, without drinks, with tip
â™¥ â™¥ â™¥

Good Mexican food is hard to come by in New York City, so when I find a place I like, I try to go back whenever I crave Mexican food that’s more filling than one taco off the street. I’ve been going to CafÃ© El Portal for several years now. I’ve known it as the “blue underground place” because of the lively paint color outside and the way you have to take small steps from street level to get in. They have since repainted the faÃ§ade a more somber washed-out red, but the food remains as satisfying as ever.

My favorite is their huitlacoche quesadilla, essentially a corn mushroom that grows within the individual kernels of a corn, disfiguring the ear and turning off any one who wants to eat a perfectly good cob. Oh, but it’s delicious when it’s cooked, sweetened with onions and flavored with epazote, a Mexican herb with the distinct taste of anise. CafÃ© El Portal adds soft goat cheese with it to cut through the overwhelming taste of the mushroom. I can never pass on this dish whenever I’m eating there.

If I am, however, in a taco mood, I go for their salty chorizo tacos, served with both beans and rice on the side. They’re not cheap on the crumbled chorizo either–two are perfect with the accompanying green salsa. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. While you’re there, make sure you order the mango or the strawberry margarita to push all that heavy lunch down.

Pamplona

37 East 28th Street between Park and Madison Avenues
212/213.2328
$180 for five people, with drinks and a lot of comps, with tip
â™¥ â™¥

I can’t say that I remember much of our night in Pamplona, but when you dine with four other women, you’d bill forgetfulness as a good thing, too. I was half an hour early, so I sat at the bar for a glass of wine. Being Filipino and alone, I’ve gotten used to being approached by men with the “Are you Philippine?” line. The older man next to me was such a gentleman, I couldn’t refuse his offer to recommend and buy me a glass of Spanish white wine. Of course, it turned out that his daughter-in-law is Filipino. My friends arrived and more rounds of complimentary drinks followed.

When our new friend left to catch his Knicks game, we were finally seated. We’ve made enough ruckus in the front of the restaurant that Chef Alex UreÃ±a stepped out to introduce himself. We were famished and ordered the entire appetizers menu to share, and later, the chef sent out several other plates with glasses of sparkling wine to end our night properly.

Some of the memorable dishes included the asparagus salad with thinly-sliced chorizo, topped with frisÃ©e and baby greens and dressed with pimiento. A meatball dish with eggplants disappeared quite fast, too, with a semi-sweet sherry sauce. I’m not a big fan of shrimps, but the Manchego rice made them fuller and beefier. A suckling pig dish was described by one of my Dominican friends as something better than Christmas pork.

One of the things that makes Pamplona irresistible is the fact that the chef serves the dishes he is familiar with, albeit, minus the foam that he learned at El Bulli and experimented with at his first restaurant, UreÃ±a. Nothing is complicated on the menu, but most of the dishes were straight-up delicious. Tapas fans will also be glad that the prices won’t break the bank and critics will appreciate that the previous interior design has been stripped to make the space more intimate and inviting.

Searching for a Good Taco: Roosevelt Avenue, Queens

The constant rumbling coming from the #7 train above us was a sure sign that we were on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. From 69th Street, we saw people who looked and sounded like us, but only a few blocks away was a completely different enclave of Queens. The Tagalog signs changed to Spanish and the music coming from cars and storefronts was turned up a notch. Colombian and Ecuadorian flags were waving with Mexico’s. There were arepas and ceviches to eat, but today, Miss Geolouxy and I were there to search for a good taco.

Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the nation, where an estimated 44 percent of the more than two million residents are foreign born. The neighborhoods of Jackson Heights and Corona had served as a magnet for a lot of newcomers from Colombia, but the 2000 census revealed a demographic shift in the number of Mexicans.

As our basis of comparison, we first stopped by Taqueria Coatzingo on 76th Street because it’s the one restaurant that kept coming up whenever I did a Google search for Mexican restaurants in the area. We noted the taqueria stands we passed by, plus the other Mexican stores across the street. Our plan was to start on 76th Street, walk up to 80th, and then walk back down to 69th.

1. Taqueria Coatzingo, 76-05 Roosevelt Avenue, 718/424.1977

You can see from the photo above what I mean by avocado mush–I’m just not a big fan. We ordered one chorizo and one tripe taco, but they sent over two chorizos to our table. We didn’t mind because it was our first meal of the day and we were hungry. The chorizo was cut into cubes and was salty enough to whet our appetites, but I prefer my chorizo crumbly. A big plus was the blistered green pepper on our plates. (Note to self: return for the tripe taco.)

2. Tacolandia, between 77th and 78th Streets on Roosevelt Avenue

We walked up to the Tacolandia counter and ordered the al pastor and the lengua, or tongue, taco. The tongue looked and tasted like tongue, but now I’m officially confused with what al pastor really is. In Staten Island, al pastor was the meat carved from a vertical rotisserie. What we got was a slab of fat and gelatinous pork skin.

3. El Poblano, 75-13 Roosevelt Avenue, 718/205.2996

We only ordered one cecina taco to go from El Poblanos. The guy at the counter must have thought it weird that we were only ordering one, so he took extra care and put it in a Styrofoam container made for hotdogs. One of the ladies looked at us skeptically when I asked for it to be spicy, but complied. We shared our one taco on a stoop across the street and it tasted like a cecina all right: chewy and dry.

4. Taco stand on the corner of 75th Street and Roosevelt Avenue

The two ladies serving up the tacos were tickled when we asked for their permission to take their photographs. They even had an official translator who sat in the van parked right next to the stand. The beef taco, as Miss Geolouxy said, looked better than it tasted. We couldn’t negotiate the hot sauce to come out of the squeezy bottle, so we doused our taco with the green pepper sauce instead to give it some sort of taste. They had the pickles, too, but they looked pretty gnarly, even for me.

5. Sabor Mexicana stand, directly outside the subway exit on 75th Street and Roosevelt Avenue

For our last taste, we ordered two tacos: a suadero, or stewed beef, and for the safe bet of having something tasty before going home, a chorizo kind. The chorizo was crumbly, which I’ve already mentioned I like, and the tips were toasty and crunchy. The beef was just tasteless and dry, almost inedible even with hot sauce.

After only a couple of tacos, I wondered if we should have gone to Corona for Mexican food. There were a couple of Mexican restaurants and a few stands selling tacos, but it wasn’t like my experience in Staten Island where there was a Mexican-something every other door. There wasn’t an outstanding taco, and the frequency of adding avocado mush surprised me. The avocado wasn’t chunky, but thin; it reminded me of Calexico’s “avocado sauce” in SoHo. After our first taste, I had to remind myself to say, Todo, pero no aguacate.

Daisy May’s BBQ USA

623 Eleventh Avenue corner of 46th Street
212/977.1500
$70 each for a whole pig for 12 people, with two sides, BYOB
â™¥ â™¥

There are a few annoying things about reserving a group table at Daisy May’s:
1. You can only reserve half a pig or a whole pork butt to feed up to six people
2. Your other choice is a whole pig for up to twelve people
3. It’s BYOB–that’s annoying because
4. you only have two hours to eat and drink, from 8pm to 10pm, and
5. you also have to bring your own ice and your own drinking glasses

If you have more than five friends, then you’re forced to do the whole pig, but your group needs to have twelve or else each person pays more to contribute to the bill. You know half a pig is enough for you and your big group of friends, but alas, rules are rules.

When you arrive at Daisy May’s for your Big Pig Gig, however, you forget every annoying thing about the restaurant. Even though I’ve done so many pig roasts in my life, the whole pig is still a sight to behold when served on a large wooden block, halved and then chopped in smaller pieces. The meat is juicy and soft and even better with the accompanying brown sauce. But the skin is disappointingly chewy and inedible. There is no crunchy tail to be found, but our chosen sides, creamed corn and the sweet potato, more than compensated. We barely touched the Texas toast and the coleslaw that come with any of the Big Pig Gig, but the watermelon, although bland, was a good finish.

The staff gave us covered plastic containers when we paid our bill. Most of us were able to take the leftovers home. I took home the head and it was made into Filipino lechon paksiw the next day. Daisy May’s serves the pigs that keep on giving.