DOS CAMINOS []
373 PARK AVE. SO. (BETWEEN 26TH AND 27TH STREETS); (212) 294-1000
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‘THE trouble with black napkins,” my stylishly dressed friend chuckles over lunch at Dos Caminos, “is that you can’t tell where the napkin leaves off and the dress begins.”
At stylishly bedecked Dos Caminos, the fun is guessing where owner Stephen Hanson’s fancy ends and chef Dudley Nieto’s begins. In fact, the place pioneers a new culinary style: Hanson-Mexican fusion.
That’s no slight. Hanson-Asian fusion clicked at Ruby Foo’s. He takes the Mexican plunge drenched in glory from his Italian smash, Fiamma. Dos Caminos, or “two roads,” takes a shrewd middle road.
It’s made for people like me who dread Mexican food in New York. Puebla-born Nieto hones Mexican ingredients to Flatiron taste without sacrificing their sun-baked vibrancy. Some dishes are worth writing home to Guadalajara about. And I’ll take his clean presentations over messy “regional” concoctions often peddled in the name of authenticity.
Dos Caminos has “party time” written all over it. Its 250 seats sprawl over three rooms in gleaming tones of gold, ochre and orange. The big middle room boasts cozy booths, “Aztec-like” decorative screens and Vegasy ceiling fixtures. Avoid the rear annex – Siberia in “a sea of indirect blue Yves Klein light.”
For a place offering 100 – count ’em, 100 – tequilas, Dos Caminos is sober enough once you’re past the madhouse bar. Start with dynamite guacamole ($12), made tableside with properly ripe avocado and a wallop of cilantro.
Proceed to sensational tostaditas de tinga ($7.50) – chipotle-tomato roast pork and avocado on crisp tortillas. The pork tingled like Spanish chorizo, seasoned with oregano, bay leaf, thyme and pickled chipotle.
Perfectly marinated tuna ceviche ($10.50) cruised a sunny sea of Costeno chile salsa aflame with mango, poblano and bell peppers. Skip dull beef taquitos ($8) for huitlacoche ($7.50), the dusky “corn mushroom” fungus that tastes like neither corn nor mushrooms, on flat sopras with cojita cheese.
Entrees seem more urbanized. Big eye tuna en verde ($21) might have taken a taxi from Hanson’s Blue Fin. The fish was fine, but an oddly coupled almond crust and and vivid green tomatillo-serrano sauce fought each other to a standstill.
Pass up tough “Cascabel” sirloin ($24) for scrumptious baby back ribs adobada ($19.50) – pre-marinated in a rub of guava, ancho chili, paprika, cumin, garlic and apple cider vinegar, then roasted and brushed with jalapeno and honey glaze. The blissful result had more barbecue spirit than most actual barbecue.
Mole, with its many chili-based complexions, can be an ornery sauce to pin down. Poorly executed it can taste like chocolate fudge, but Nieto uses chocolate in only one, mole poblano. Sweetened with raisins and plantains, it fervently exoticized juicy roast chicken ($18.50).
Yuppified variations yielded mixed results. Mild pumpkin-seed mole made little impression on a plate heaped with garlicky shrimp pipian ($19). And a fruity number with ancho-glazed salmon ($18) wandered down the wrong road altogether.
Bryan Garcia’s desserts ($8) hit the spot, especially his spin on classic warm pistachio crepes with bananas. The waiters make you spin, like the guy who demands, “Is it delicious?,” of refried beans as bad as only refried beans can be.
And mind the fellows who usher you to the toilets. Twice, they eerily preceded me inside, sprayed it with aerosol and lifted the seat lid like hospital orderlies. Get these guys off the road now.