Excellent Mexican In NYC

This last Friday I went out for dinner with some friends at Mole, Mexican Bar & Grill and it was really great. You may remember my earlier post about Rubio's Fish Tacos, and how I lamented the fact that the closest fish taco worth consuming was 1,776 miles away. Well there is good news. Mole is great. I have to tip my hat to my friend Lyndi, a fellow southern Californian who pointed the place out, and to Vanessa for organizing an evening there.

Let's get down to gory details. They don't take reservations and we were a bit late for when my friend had informally told them we were coming so we waited at the bar for a while. Not to worry however, the Margaritas ($8 per) are great. While initially I was a little skeptical of their "fruit flavored" margaritas, "oh, no blended fruit syrup and ice", I was pleasantly wrong. My wife had a Kumquat margarita that she really enjoyed. And while, I'm not a huge fan of eating kumquats straight (there is one in my parents front yard) it makes perfect sense as a margarita. I had the Ginger Lime margarita (rocks with salt). It was a great refreshing middle place between a margarita and a mule (lime juice / ginger beer / rum / and maybe a splash of seltzer over ice). I happily put away two before dinner. Before I forget, the salted rim of the glass was more than just salted, there was a pepper mix in the salt that made me want to shamelessly lick the outside of the glass. I did manage to refrain, but I did rotate every sip to catch another hit of the fire and ginger and lime flavor hit. Finally, and this isn't on the menu kids so pay attention, my friend ordered a Jalapeño Cucumber margarita - uh huh. I didn't get a sip my wife did and she says it is amazing. Don't tell the mole folks but I think there was some reverse engineering going on between my wife and our partner in culinary crime, Jenn.

Let's move on to dinner. Suitably impressed by the beverages I was ready for the menu (and I was pretty damn hungry). Actually, in talking to the bartender, who incidentally is the husband of the Chef, we learned that the mole (their namesake) is actually made by the Chef's mother in Mexico and sent up to NYC. Now of course I have images of a small plane of the stuff in large cocaine brick sized plastic bags touching down in the dusty Mojave desert and some coyote picking it up from there and running it to the airport to be further smuggled to NYC, but I'm pretty sure that is just my over active imagination.

Now seriously, the food. I went straight for the Enchiladas De Mole ($16), three chicken enchiladas served with authentic imported “Poblano” mole sauce. I mean after the margaritas and the story about the stuff being made in Mexico it seemed like a no-brainer. My wife after some indecision went with the Baja Style Fish Tacos ($17 I think) three lovely fish tacos brimming with fish, lettuce (a little unusual), avocado served on purple corn tortillas. I'm not 100% on the sequence of events but as the food showed up or there abouts I managed to convince her or she was kind enough to me to swap dishes. So I got the fish tacos and she the mole. Both were over the moon. I had a couple bites of the mole and it did a somersault of taste from rich chocolate to earthy peppers to a rich coffee and finished with a nice smolder. The enchiladas were just smothered in a bath of this perfect mole. The fish tacos, cue the angel choir, were divine and a perfect rendition of what I love as Baja style fish tacos. No cheese overpowering things, a little pico de gallo, some lime juice, cabbage (but the lettuce really worked), and corn tortillas. It's perfect in it's simplicity. The battered and fried fish was done to perfection and the whole thing was a symphony of sour lime, rich subtle fish and the earthiness of the corn tortilla.

So, I'm in love. I don't have to go to Denver to get fish tacos, and I have accidentally stumbled on some good Mexican food in a nice welcoming family run joint.

Mole Mexican Bar & Grill
205 Allen Street
New York, NY 10002
(212) 777-3200