I got a real soft spot for diners. Back home in Binghamton there’s a plethora of these homey, formica-laden joints run by Greeks who serve uncomplicated meals for a criminally small amount of money. Think meals for two for twelve dollars including coffee and tip. There’s not a ton of variance in the execution of the basic formula but it’s always exciting to see how Rolando’s home fries differ from those at Chris’s Diner or what kind of sausage is the house’s sacred pig.

Thing is we ain’t got many of em in New York. Generic diner food is as much a niche as any of the other insanely specific cuisines and in that world it’s one of the less interesting draws. A benefit of this lack of inherent popularity is that your local diner is populated by locals. Largely these are people who took no special trip outside a short stroll and hence generic diners are rarely totally full-up.

And so it was on a Monday morning at Bill’s. My companion and I were quickly sat at a light-orange (formica) table. The menu had the usual suspects: eggs, potatoes, french toast, pancakes, bacon, sausages. I had an easy time choosing eggs sunnyside-up with sausage and hashbrowns, my compatriot the french toast. We realized the establishment was cash-only so my friend left to acquire cash.

We figured we’d have time if he left immediately. Wrong. As the waitress returned with the coffee we ordered she also had our meals. So I ate. The sausage was fine. The potatoes lacked any alium seasoning, leaning exclusively on paprika. The eggs were well done. My guy’s french toast was done on some chintzy white bread but with enough butter and corn-maple-syrup to be palatable. I finished my meal before he returned.

We paid fourteen dollars for the pleasure of joining Bill’s Monday crew. I’d go back, if I were in the area.

My choice in establishments to review has been pretty safe. I’ve picked places with a certain amount of presentation or hype – at the least places where I, to some degree, understood the definition of the names of the dishes. It’s a been a safe and sometimes boring road but nonetheless we move forward.

Forward for Badabing is a return to ideals. Originally, my concept for Badabing was to eat on the marrow of Bushwick. I expected to seek out the weird dirty counters and tiny dining room redolent of fried corn from which flavors from another world could afford to exist. Reality was more about me finding every place that would boost my meager Instagram following.

That all said, the money goes where the mouth is happy.

Taqueria Cocoyoc is definitively a place deserving of your money. To my discredit they’re on many of the “Top Ten Bushwick” lists but the hype is deserved. We couldn’t eat more than half of what we ordered but every bit was worth the incoming pain.

On its face, Cocoyoc is very much like Taqueria Sofia and hence most of the deeper holes in the proverbial wall. Differences: their floors are tiled, the menu doesn’t read like a multiplication table for proteins by ground corn shapes, and the beer feels expensive. It’s not, but six bucks for the usual suspects can feel steep. The rest of the initial impression is correct: none of it matters as much as the food in your mouth.

This will be the last time I order chalupas. They’re likely the perfect pairing to grumbly bellies and 1AM Coronas but that stomach space is better spent elsewhere. The best that can come from them, from a reviewer’s standpoint, is a solid assessment of the salsa offerings. To wit: red salsa at Cocoyoc is musty and burnt, the green tangy but not fresh. Low point of the evening for certain and not a serious blemish on the meal, but not information that had to be scraped off a chalupa.

The quesadillas follow a strangely American form. Every Mexican person I know tells me that quesadillas include one or two ingredients: cheese and a meat or plant protein. The quesadillas I order in Bushwick always include additional cotija (drier and saltier than the interior stretchy cheese), crema, lettuce, and tomatoes. This additional water, crunch, and salt is pretty perfect considering the ample thickness of the corn tortillas. We had to order two to get them with flor de calabasa and together they were a meal in their own right. The zucchini flowers themselves were definitely a frozen or canned product – expected given the season, and still tasty.

The tacos were certainly deserving of their merits. Their tortillas were dead-on average, slightly chewy and tasting of corn. It’s not my preference to double-up tortillas but it’s the mode when you’ve got wet meats. But the meat! The first was ell-braised tongue, savory and deep. But the barbacoa enchilada tacos really pushed all the buttons. Not too sweet but smoky and tangy and delicious enough that I wasn’t offended by the dollop of crema on top of pointless lettuce and tomatoes. Worth a return visit, just to see what else they’re doing well.

I had a good meal and didn’t have to break the bank. Did it exceed my expectations? No but I think it’s fair to say Taqueria Cocoyoc gets only half the hype it deserves. My hope is that all places like this get a slightly larger share of the market and that they steal it away from the polished, manicured locations. We don’t have to eat at dirty and dingy holes but these less aesthetic places certainly are making comparable food at much better prices.

General Deb’s opened up about a year ago, as the unasked-for Bushwick-take on authentic Sichuan food. Brick walls, neon signs, and indirect lighting; it’s a pretty standard recipe for Bushwick interiors (see Lil Mo). It’s cute, it’s industrial – it’s effective at setting a chill mood. I went to Gen. Deb’s for their inaugural evening and I resolved to return at a later date to see what they would present when the dust had settled.

As someone interested in Chinese food at large I was very excited to have an outlet open in my neighborhood. Chinatown’s luster has settled into a number of understood grooves. Flushing’s Chinafood scene, while authentic and mindbogglingly good, is real far away. One can only patronize Birds of a Feather so many times in a month. Mission Chinese is fantastically, uniquely, Mission Chinese. How could I begrudge a sichuan spot just a walk away?

In my first visit the problems came early. Portions were half the size of those offered in all of the aforementioned places for similar prices. The flavors themselves didn’t jump off the plate but rather seemed constrained to the sweet ‘n’ savory method of more Americanized Chinese food. Szechuan spice was applied but it failed to reach mouth-numbing intensity. Cumin happened in the cumin-beef but it graced the plate as delicately as a sledgehammer-sized crochet needle. Overall it just felt like some kinks needed to be ironed out; details agonized over.

With no small sadness I report that none of this Work has happened. The most glaring example of this lack of refinement is the overwhelming saltiness of the majority of the dishes we tried. It’s a shame – the braised daikon, served cold, had a fantastic texture; toothy and yielding at the same time. However by bite three, we couldn’t imagine why anyone would ADD finishing salt or neglect to give the savory vegetable any depth. Cilantro; coriander; fermented chili crisp; Grandma’s Black Beans; any of these could have added another dimension to a well-executed textural success. Instead we had an overabundance of juicy-soft, radish-flavored, salt cubes.

Fortunately this wasn’t the peak of the meal. That honor goes to the long beans. Sauteed, garnished with who-gives-a-fuck, these unassuming vegetables stole the day given that they were well-cooked and not oversalted. Fantastically mediocre success. They did their job. First and last time I’d say that in General Failure’s Chinese Food Emposerium.

Like a three-wheeled 1976 Oldsmobile Toronado trying to finish the last leg of the Cannonball Run, the meal refused to end gracefully. Downshifting into the safer, more predictable flavors of dan-dan mein, we were blindsided by its sauce: so salty, it blew a gasket in the coolant system shooting up a gout of vapor. The texture of the noodles and vegetables were utterly lost in this saltcloud. White rice came to our rescue, allowing us to scrub off our windshield and tongues, and we regrouped for the downhill section of the course. We had but a glance of the hellmaw before us. A fiendish track twisted through a maze of low-hanging twice-over-cooked pork branches. The roadway was treacherous, slick with insipid peppers and flavorless sweet brown sauce. Limping, we suffered through an endless series of sinewy, chewy right-hand turns, shuffling our hulking meal beast down the mountain of cheap bacon. Even when we tried to divert course onto leek-laden shortcuts we suffered the same fate; inedible fibers and flavorless drudgery.

We plain refused to cross the finish line. I crashed our handicapped landboat into a tree, left the pork and leeks where they lay, and went to the Dessert Time Rest Stop; only to be let down yet again. The only offering was a baiju cream tart. I’ll be fair, baiju is a crazy sell. It’s an insanely unfun flavor for the American palette. I have spent a couple of years watching people try to make it work through one kind of flavor alchemy or another. I had to assume the kitchen understood this challenge. And so, if they were going to put it on the menu, I could only hope they had made a breakthrough. We were served a strange cream in a store bought tart that was a let-down in every way and then additionally off-putting. Nothing about the flavor of baiju is a walk in the park, and this dessert served only as testimonial to that truth.

In the end I felt confused. We had spent double the money we had spent on better meals in the area for an experience that was uniquely disappointing. Technical failures, expectation mismatches – even the bathroom felt like it was tripping over itself. (The bubbling, relaxing water features was all but drowned out by the main light fixture in the room. Both lights are controlled by the same switch. Why?) In the end however I’m not certain this confusion is truly the source of Deb’s woes. Their missteps are so basic and banal: overseasoning, undercooking. These are failures that stem from lack of rigor, or experience. Which could sound like they need to go back to research, to eat more of Chinese food in New York. I would assert instead that they need to eat (and critique) more of their own.

Brunch blows. Brunch people are unbearable. Debating the value of brunch only makes the whole affair worse. These conversations rank in equal value to the National Enquirer’s most recent takedown of Deadbeat Celebrity Dads Without Children.

Mexican brunch, while still brunch, assuages the beast. There’s something terribly comforting about salsa roja on eggs with a crispy flour tortilla, or the salsa verde laden tortilla chips buried under crema and pickled onions and cilantro. Maybe it’s the sizable portions that stimulate the aneurysm-preventing compounds deep in my brain. Possibly the howling in my head is brought on not by the Brunch itself but rather by the weaker members of the New York Brunch Pack – a crowd who frequently fail to show up to Mexican brunch.

It certainly felt that way at Amaranto. Somehow, even in a place featuring ubiquitous black chairs, obvious pastels, and wicked wall art (the trifecta of hipster bait), everyone missed the memo that they’re doing really nice brunch there. The dining room is a plain square: entrance in the front, kitchen in the back, bar along the far wall. For all the starkness of the room, their dinner and drinks menus certainly ring bonus bells with their willingness to experiment. But for all of it I can’t exactly tell if their successes on the brunch plate are to their credit or the to credit of Mexican food brunch.

For a while I felt that Mexican brunch was not only a glaring exception to my brunch-hating rule, it was not a technically difficult meal to execute. Just last week, I was proven terribly, terribly wrong by a cute-ass mole-focused joint in Williamsburg. In 45 minutes they showed me not only that one can fail to meet Mexican excellence but indeed that they can reach deeper into said failure than I could have anticipated.

Where the mole-joint fell short with its rice and beans, over-cooked eggs, and bland sauces, Amaranto plainly shone. It all showed up in my chilaquiles. I asked for salsa rojo and my server did me the accidental favor of sending them out instead in verde. The salsa was tangy and bright green with copious crema and a fatty slice of avocado. The salsa rojo side was hot with ripe chiles while the additional arbol hot sauce was perfectly spiced and creamy. The huevos rancheros too were excellent, covered in that salsa rojo with an awesomely crunchy flour tortilla.

I will probably go back for dinner. If this first visit was any indication, they’ve got portion-size under control and on the side of the customer. Plus they aren’t trying too hard to get the formula right. Too often you see restaurants enhancing their appeal with “exotic” ingredients, only to find the nasturtiums or uni or huitlacoche are applied with a rather hammy first. If Amaranto tells me the pork chops are best served with a Mole encacahuatado, I’ll take their word for it.

The concept of Michelin-starred dining experiences are a strange bird for me. First off, I’ve got to note I’ve only eaten at one-star locations (or those who no longer have their star). I pretty much have no clue what a three-star experience could be and how different it is from a one-star. So I’ve got a bias; in favor of cheaper places, in favor of eating without auspice, against instagrammable places. I have ideological reasons for being against condensing and filing my experience (based both in my ego and against flattening experiences). I’m over-lumping Michelin and over-documentation but they go hand-in-hand in the long run; more stars awarded for good looking food (not an unfair assessment) means business and hence, volunteered advertising.

The Bib Gourmand category makes me feel like Le Guide has seen me and my pickiness coming. Focused on affordable meals and recognizing them for their excellence in tandem, the list features many more venues with much less fanfare. While it doesn’t include all my close personal neighborhood favorites it certainly highlights experiences worth having for not-a-truckload of money. Seeing Falansai on this list certainly confirms my personal bias.

Vietnamese in flavor and style and French in execution is a compelling concept and Falansai by no means drops the ball. My first visit, two years ago, was more impressive. The menu has shrunk/been streamlined; I know it’s smaller but I’m not sure that this is a problem. And given how good the recent visit was, I’m more than willing to admit the likelihood with which I remember the past visit a little too rosily.

Their vegetable dishes are the most representative of Falansai’s style. Most memorable is the tamarind-tomato-glazed lotus root. It’s literally the image in my head when I say the word Falansai. It’s tangy, it’s savory, it’s sweet, it’s nutty; all in perfect harmony. Second was a surprisingly tender Chinese okra-squash. While it resembled bitter melon, it tasted more like a juicy zucchini laden with illusive hot-wok-oil sear. The last of the trio was a curry-braised kabocha squash. A bit grainy and starchy, its sweetness was still welcome to round out the plate.

The pho at Falansai takes up a considerable portion of their menu but I don’t find it as memorable as others I’ve had in Brooklyn. Possibly this is because we didn’t receive our ordered upgrade (the Sa De looked VERY good) to the basic beef pho. Another likely option is I don’t understand the appeal of a broth quite that simple. Far and away I prefer the saltier and more rich offerings from the soup-noodle world. It feels as though the “globe-trotting” add-ons exist to appeal to similar minded patrons. The offered styles feel a bit out of step but I’d have to eat them before I make any further comments.

It should be of little surprise then that we deeply dug the stir-fried crab and glass noodles. Sweet and salty, the noodles perfectly underscored the crab flavor. The texture was barely moist with perfectly tender glass noodles. It’s a dish I’d make in my home again and again if I could figure it out.

And that vibe is probably the unsung hero of Falansai; hominess. It feels very much like you’ve been welcomed into the breezy living room of a mature older family member whose taste is much better than yours. The service on a Friday night was a bit scarce (one server for the whole room ends up stretched pretty thin) but that leaves you more time with your fellow diners. Get a bottle of wine (the list is solid) and relax for a while with someone you give a shit about. This is a place that’s going to make that experience wonderful everytime.

Off the Avenue of the Puerto Ricos on the edge of East Williamsburg Bushwick lies another outpost of the Bozu Japanese food empire, Samurai Papa. Serving ramen, as opposed to Samurai Mama’s udon noodles, this is the second (or first?) of two Papa joints in Brooklyn. I’d tell you which came first but the About pages of every of these restaurants only extoll the virtues of Kaiki water. This “revitalizing” process that boasts removing contaminants, pH-balancing and, “break[ing] apart inactive water clusters into stable molecules that are easily absorbed at the cellular level”. The devotion to the power of the process is likely my only qualm with the Bozu sushi group. However I am very willing to overlook the zaniness of their claims in praise of the excellence of their food.

Not that everything was amazing. The pork buns were above-average, well seasoned and juicy but not a bao above the rest. And the spicy fried chicken was a bit flat. The mess served with the chicken (greens, onions, cherry tomatoes, cucumber) only made the dish resemble an Olive Garden salad. The habanero sauce deserves special dishonorable mention for being neither well-spiced nor habanero flavored. Italian dressing might very well have been a better sauce.

The bukkake-style ramen, however, made up for all that noise. According to their menu, bukkake-style is denoted by use of a concentrated broth for your noodles. The bowl is then served with a side of dashi to adjust the strength of the broth.

It’s pretty amazing. Maybe it’s my salt-forward palette or my predilection for strong flavors but hot damn did I enjoy that bowl of ramen. The soy-egg was creamy, the corn and bok choy sweet and luscious, the pork deeply savory. I had a damn good time chewing all the way to bottom, breaking up my salty mouthfuls with sips of clean, warm dashi.

Samurai Papa’s vibe is often too-well lit and rocking that concrete look fresh out of the Bushwick School of Interior Design. But I’m going back, or at least to the Bed-Stuy location. It’s worth it for the affordable ramen. How often do you need more than that and a beer?

A nine year staple of Morgantown, Momo’s sushi shack is the Bushwick twin of Williamsburg’s Bozu sushi. I’ve visited the cozy, dark room and its communal tables several times. Their menu features eclectic flavors, an emphasis on technique, and a unique playfulness. However, over the years the level of playfulness has toned down as they found their voice and place in the neighborhood. To that point, the food always feels like a very well curated experience.

We sat at the bar on a cold Sunday. With the communal tables full we were in danger of being sat at the auxiliary dining room, a frigid Bushwick-gray-cement affair with nobody else in the room. However even at the bar the orange main room was as welcoming as ever.

From previous visits I quickly learned must-haves on the menu. The kinpira or burdock root salad is pleasantly sweet and vegetal with lots of savory notes. The tsukemono are fantastic and an inspiration. The cucumber was dark, salty, but clean; the tomatoes were cherries with their flesh perfectly condensed; the carrots done with yuzu juice were light and tangy. Almost every bite of pickle is perfect. This is the plate that introduced me to nukadoko, the Japanese fermenting technique that uses a rice-bran bed to transform vegetables. It’s how they perfectly pickle the peeled tomatoes while making them simultaneously dense and creamy.

Next to arrive was takoyaki – steaming hot balls of a creamy eggy dashi batter cooked into a perfect sphere surrounding bits of octopus and scallion. They get topped with a mayonnaise, a sweet takoyaki sauce, and bonito flakes. I’ve made takoyaki a number of times (even ordered the machine from Japan) and it’s perfect food in my book. Momo’s takoyaki are on point, the sauces perfect. As a thought, I question the place of takoyaki – traditionally street food – in a restaurant. Right up until I’m eating them and I shut up.

The takoyaki is joined by pork betty, a Bozu-family-style portion of almost-jellied pork belly in soy sauce dotted with mayonnaise. It’s good pork in a tasty sauce and that’s all I have to say about that.

Next to show up were the uni mazeman, the A-B Crunchy roll, and the Snapper Ume Ae. The mazeman was a buttery, cheesy noodle bowl topped with seaweed and uni to lighten things up. Tasty, heavy, and seafoody enough to not be just butter-flavored-comfort food. The Snapper and A-B Crunchy roll (shrimp, cucumber, spicy mayo) were similarly tasty. The rice in the A-B roll was nice, the shrimp tasty, and the trio of soy sauces blended with wasabi is always fun to work with. The snapper was a nice fish pile with craisins and scallions. On one hand I appreciated the simplicity of the dish but on the other it was indicative of the less-creative direction of the menu. Nothing about that dish needed to be eaten the first time, nevermind if it merits a return visit.

This visit is my most conflicted of the many I’ve made between Bozu and Momo. Much of my reason for eating at Momo is the weirdness. Their menu once had a playful, jarring twist on what was well-executed Japanese cuisine. It was a unique face, a bevy of traditional techniques presented with a sense of humor and almost hubristic aplomb. It’s possible I’m jaded by years of experience in the industry and that the emperor has no clothes. But in the end I cannot ignore that the meal was GOOD. Not just burrito or gyro or taco good but well-voiced and executed. My hypothesis/diagnosis is that Momo’s years in the neighborhood are starting to wear. They have likely made a number of sacrifices in the face of rising rent. These often take shape in sparse staffing, stretching your core team further and further until what was yesterday’s Offering to the Rent Gods has become today’s Daily Bread.

It was written in jade on the faces of those in the kitchen. It was carved into the icy service blanket with which we were wrapped. I have seen that front-of-house manager be much more friendly. I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt that it had been a long week and that a busy Sunday night was not a welcome challenge.

In spite of this I heavily recommend a visit or three. Bring friends, dig deep into the weird places on the menu. For me, it’s entirely possible that my time at Momo has come. I’ll probably be back one more time, just to make sure there isn’t some last leaf I have yet to turn.

In the space that was once Tutu’s now stands a proper Belgian restaurant serving up a fine upgrade to the burger-at-the-bar concept.

I’m likely more critical and less nostalgic of Tutu’s than the average Morgantownie. My memories are blurred along the lines of mediocre menus, sticky floors, and a skeevy sounding electronic music dance basement. This is also the first Brooklyn bar I went to and within the first week of arriving in New York. I’ve been back only one other time since then so maybe I’m a poor judge of what was once, likely a wonderful dive bar.

Benelux seems to understand my feelings; they’ve spiffed up considerably. The front room is more or less the same – just bright enough for safety. But everything seems better defined, less grungy. I feel safer, less likely to catch a disease. The back dining room is considerably brighter and seemingly focused on the food. We asked to be sat in the room when it was empty, but with only a couple more full tables the room quickly warmed up.

The food too, under the direction of Husk alum Colby Rasavong is a distinct improvement in the same vein. The Belgian style of the menu doesn’t feel like a huge shift from the old burger style but its implementation is a league of an improvement. Forget your old bar snacks, the crab appetizer features actual lump crab! It’s served with perfectly tangy salt and vinegar chips and it shows off the power of chervil as a flavor and garnish. The Belgian endive salad was also very welcome, the bitterness offset by the spiced walnuts and a citrus forward dressing. These two set the tone for the meal: uncomplicated and well executed.

Full disclosure: I know members of the kitchen at Benelux and was fortunate enough to have some dishes sent out. This was the endive salad and the next dish, the oysters Florentine. Sadly the oysters were the lowlight of the meal but I acknowledge I prefer cold to warm oysters. I think if the breading had taken on more color I would have got more out of the dish. In the end it was a salty squishy cheesy mouthful that landed right in the middle of nowhere.

For mains we ordered the mitraillette, a Belgian classic, and the steak frites. Ravasong does his own aging in house and hot damn he does it well. The perfectly basted rare steak has more than a hint of funk and it made every bite as compelling as the first. The fries too were wonderfully crispy without being fried into crunchy. The mitraillette is served with luscious ham prepared in-house and a side of mornay sauce of which there could not be enough. On the side of both these we got one of each sauce. The tangy comeback sauce took the cake, the smooth and thick garlic aioli took second.

To finish we ordered the Stroopwafel ice cream sandwich with cinnamon ice cream. A delicious concept but the execution was less glamorous. Stroopwafel is best served warm so you miss out on the gooey caramel that defines them. Plus it was a messy affair, losing most of the ice cream after the first bite. In the end I wanted less chewy wafel and more creaminess.

All told, Benelux has down pat the fatty delicious Belgian staples. I look forward to a return visit to try the housemade sausages, as well as to see what develops on and off the menu. Their dedication to the Belgian concept in tandem with their deceptively precise execution is definitely going to keep them on my radar for the foreseeable future.

Something I hadn’t considered when going to Santa Panza for the first time; pizza is from Italy. Objectively this is a stupid thought. But the only information about Santa Panza that had stuck in my brain was simply, “has pizza.”

Cue my surprise at the pizzeria’s maps of Italy, quaint country windows in its front-room facade, bread and oil served with the meal, and Italian names for everything on the menu. All the way down to the olive oil exclusively imported and sold by the restaurant, the details revealed an unexpected corollary; my pizza joint was also very proud to be an Italian restaurant.

However when it came to the food itself the pizza was the only star. Neapolitan style pies, they come sized either six or twelve-inches, served with a red pepper flake spiced olive oil. For my money the six-inch size is great as an add-on or appetizer for two. I imagine with a larger group the twelve-inch would be ideal in the same role, or as the focus of the meal. And I’d do that in a heartbeat because it was the best thing we had all night. Chewy, crunchy crust – some of my favorite in New York – and a pleasantly tangy red sauce. We ordered both the salame piccante and the bresaola white-special and in the end with the presence of red sauce on the salame won out.

Initially I was excited for the deeper cuts on the menu. However, neither of the dishes tried stood out. The burrata was very good; soft, creamy, and pretty luscious. It was likely made in house or a very well sourced product. But that was the long and short of it. The octopus dish failed to meet those expectations. While it was all cooked correctly the positive qualities of the dish stop there. The soft fingerling potatoes were not dissimilar enough in flavor or texture to be the sole accompaniment to a tomato-braised octopus. All of the herbal, lemony, spicy, or charred notes that work well to elevate octopus simply weren’t there. I’m likely being overly critical but for all the tweezing that went into the garnish on top I would have expected the flavors underneath to show a bit more flair.

Maybe those expectations for Santa Panza are misaligned. Is that octopus an authentic representation of Italian food? Is it sacrilege to dress-up a creamy burrata purse? The better question for me is “Does it make good food?”

I have a tendency to look for ingenuity over authenticity and that pushes me in a direction to devalue simpler foods. The pizza at Santa Panza validates me in this. It’s not just well-executed, its menu is interesting and the specials are compelling. The rest of the menu can be as authentic and heartfelt as it likes but if I’m going back, it’s for pizza.

Bushwick is littered with Mexican taquerias. They sport names like Taqueria Vaqueros, Taqueria Izucar, and Taqueria Milear (notice a theme?) Their colorful façades run the line between beautiful and ostentatious. The kitchens vary, ranging from the windowed counter at Acatlan to the backroom at GDDII to the stacked-on cooler case at Taqueria Sofia. The menus all look the same – a mix-and-match of meats packed into different forms of masa. They’re not always clean, they’re not always polished, and maybe your abuelita is cleaning giant corn kernels in the dining room. But none of this detracts from the experience or more importantly the excellence of the food.

This is certainly true of the small dining room at Taqueria Sofia. The proximity to the kitchen, the plastic tables and chairs, and the avocados hanging out on dining tables only contributed to the Latin Grammy atmosphere pumped out from the the giant television on the wall. Ordinarily the overbearing television would be a serious detriment but the ridiculousness of the award show kept life in the empty room.

The food far exceeded these (admittedly low) expectations. My favorite was the very well seasoned steak fajitas with onions and red peppers next to perfectly fine piles of rice and beans. The seasoning was complex beyond simple salt but not a crutch to cover up the beef flavor.

The trio of tostadas we ordered were pretty excellent as well. The tongue took the day of the three, its perfectly soft and deeply savory meat contrasting perfectly with the crispy tostada. The al pastor was delightful in its excess of pineapple and subsequent sweetness. The chorizo was acceptable but, overcooked and under seasoned it solidly took bottom billing. The lettuce, crema, and tomatoes while not “authentic Mexican” were admittedly clutch when paired with the super-crunchy tostada bottoms.

The most fun surprise of the meal was the chalupas. I’m very certain they’re not true Mexican chalupas (check out Empellon Al Pastor for the real shape of the beast). However, as far as cheese, salsa, and lettuce on a tortilla goes they were a damn tasty six bucks. The salsa offerings, green and red in tandem on our chalupas, were typically delicious on everything.

Taqueria Sofia typifies the Mexican taqueria in Bushwick. Store-bought corn tortillas, salty meats, and vibrant salsas. What sets them apart for me is the excellent tongue (top three I’ve had), the tasty steak, and the fact that nothing else dropped the ball. They’re providing an above-average food experience at very good value. The only true cost there is atmosphere but I’ll argue it isn’t every night one must eat in dimly lit mood magic restaurants. On occasion it’s ok to sit in fluorescent lights, see the face of your loved one, and giggle at the antics of the entertainment industry in all its finery. Award season isn’t that far away and I would not be sad to find myself taking it in on plastic seats with a mouthful of chalupa.