sausage taco fixings
“Any dinner requests?”
“Something sausagy.”
For hours I’d been fighting the impulse to say, hell with it, let’s go to Viva for enchiladas and margaritas. It was one of those frustrating Mexican food cravings that strike me — frustrating because it’s no easy thing to get good Mexican here in the big city. This is surprising, considering that, in nearly any restaurant in Manhattan or Brooklyn, your food is likely to be cooked by a Mexican guy. Yet this most international of cities cannot boast a taco culture that’s even in the same league as Chicago, Portland, LA, or just about anywhere in the great state of Texas. If you can swallow the caveats, there are exceptions. Don’t mind waiting a long while to have two tacos the size of silver-dollar pancakes thrown at you by a glowering hipster? Try Bedford Ave’s La Superior. Want a more authentic experience, and don’t mind mediocre ingredients? Greenpoint’s Acapulco Deli, or anywhere Jackson Heights, are calling your name. But for the kind of explosive synthesis of texture, color, salt, heat, and meat that you’ll find from the window of a taco truck or plaza stand most anywhere in Mexico proper — and which the taco trucks of the Pacific Northwest do a fair job of synthesizing — you’re out of luck. Viva, a few blocks from me on Sullivan St. in Red Hook, isn’t bad, but it’s a bit overpriced for the gringoed-out approximation that it is. Eating there, you get the sense that the cooks could really turn it on if they chose to, but that the market here might not bear it. Mind you, I like the place, and I want them to succeed. The staff is nice, the drinks are strong, and the sauces for the chips show depth of flavor, but I wasn’t feeling $10/plate chicken enchiladas with cute squiggles of cream on top and nary a drop of mole poblano in sight. And, I had a budget to stick to. And, there was this matter of sausages. Read the rest of this entry »
