When Otto Cedeno first moved from Southern California to attend NYU in 2003, he recalls there being no decent Mexican food around. “I remember asking a roommate where there was good Mexican, and he responded [jokingly], ‘What’s Mexican food?’ ”
As far as East Coast vs. West Coast rivalries go, the West has long been the clear winner in this cuisine category, as New York restaurants have tended to veer toward Tex-Mex. But that’s been changing, with exciting new Mexican restaurants opening in the city, serving both authentic tacos and highly creative, modern takes on South-of-the-border fare.
Last year, Cedeno opened his Otto’s Tacos with fellow Californian Joseph LoNigro as executive chef. LoNigro spent three to four months developing the tortillas, which are made in-house and filled with simple recipes of meat, onion, cilantro and fresh salsas, just like the Southern California street tacos the two grew up eating.
“[Within] what New York is trying to do with Mexican food, we’re trying to find our own voice,” says Cedeno, “whether it’s heightening it, raising the bar, or simply just focusing on the details and doing something really simple, really good.”
This city’s Mexican-food scene got another big boost — and a very distinct voice — last week when Mexico City chef Enrique Olvera opened Cosme in the Flatiron neighborhood. Olvera’s Pujol restaurant in Mexico City has made the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list every year since 2010, and Cosme is his first time cooking in New York since graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1999.
“I always wanted to come back to New York because I wanted to cook here again,” says Olvera, who has built up a small restaurant empire back in Mexico — but nothing in Los Angeles.
Naturally, his new menu doesn’t entail a single cheesy enchilada or a burrito combo. Instead, diners are being offered a modest selection of sophisticated small plates, such as sliced raw hamachi (a Japanese fish) with fermented serranos and black limes, and smoked white ayocote beans with radish and charred cucumber, accompanied by tortillas made in-house from heirloom corn.
“[It] might not sound Mexican, but you can taste it,” says Olvera. “We’re doing a burrata and green sauce with weeds — the plants that people don’t want. But it tastes like chilaquiles.” (And, fascinatingly, it does.)
Such haute cuisine is quite different from what passed for Mexican in the city not long ago.
This past May, chef Mario Hernandez opened Black Ant in the East Village, serving elevated Mexican entrees like cod-cheek tacos with garlic aioli. He remembers moving to New York City from Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the mid-’90s, when it was quite a different scene.
“The city was full of Tex-Mex restaurants,” recalls Hernandez, whose father, Ramon, was one of the first chefs at the 30-year-old Rosa Mexicano, once the city’s fanciest place to get South-of-the-border fare. “A couple years ago, the real revolution started happening in New York City, with young chefs experimenting with Mexican cuisine.”
Alex Stupak, a former pastry chef at WD-50, is one of the young guns at the forefront of New York’s new Mexican. He opened both Empellón Taqueria and Empellón Cocina to great critical acclaim in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Stupak was initially influenced by Mexican cuisine in Los Angeles, where his wife Lauren is from, but his inspired tacos — filled with fried Maine smelt or beef milanesa — have a distinctive New York flair about them.
And Stupak is continuing to up his game. In October he debuted Empellón al Pastor, a casual spot on St. Marks Place selling his signature tacos with artisanal salsa and sides. The kitchen boasts a $60,000 custom-built machine to make fresh tortillas the right way, starting with whole corn kernels — not premade corn flour.
Better tortillas are key, Stupak says. New York’s Mexican food has often been lacking “because the missing ingredient is freshness.” But no longer.
“The rule here is, the tortillas still have to have heat from the original cooking with it [when they’re served],” he says. “It’s the most important and fundamental cooking technique in Mexico. Imagine going [for] Italian food and the travesty of them reheating their pasta.”
So, has NYC caught up with LA when it comes to Mexican food?
“It’s way too early to call, and frankly, I think it’s going to be an ongoing battle between California’s traditional Mexican and New York’s up-and-comers that are trying to do something with Mexican cuisine,” says Cedeno, who will be opening a second Otto’s Tacos location in the West Village by the end of the year. But the conversation is changing, and New York is no longer suffering from a salsa-topped inferiority complex.
“I really think it’s a back and forth dialogue between LA and New York. I don’t think any chef thinks, ‘How do we beat California?’ ” says Cedeno. “It’s, ‘How do we do amazing Mexican food in our neighborhood?’ ”