NEW YORK CITY (By Frank Bruni, NYTimes) August
31, 2005 MY friend
reached our table in the dungeon like hideaway of La Esquina's main dining
room about 25 minutes late. Only 15 of those were her fault.
A few of the additional 10 had to do with her
understandable difficulty believing my instructions that the street-level
portal was the one marked "No Admittance." The rest of the minutes had to do
with the hostess she encountered when she hesitantly approached that door.
The hostess claimed not to have any record of our reservation.
"She wouldn't let the guy ahead of me in
either," my friend reported. "We both stood there pleading."
Finally, my friend said, a manager
intervened, recognizing her as the straggler in a group already seated and
green-lighting her chutes-and-ladders passage down a harshly lighted
staircase, along a corridor with kitchen supplies, through the kitchen
itself, and into the contrived darkness of the vault where we waited.
I asked her if she was miffed.
She gave me the derisive, pitying look that
a sane person gives a lunatic.
"The harder it is to get in, the more fun
it is to be in," she said, articulating a maxim of Manhattan night life and
a guiding principle of La Esquina, which is sort of like Studio 54 with
chipotle instead of cocaine. "I'm already in love with this place."
Over time La Esquina, which serves
pared-down, priced-up Mexican food, will rise or fall on the merits of its
chorizo quesadilla, chiles rellenos, pulled-pork taquito and grilled whole
red snapper.
But for now the buzz that whirls around it,
the stampede of diners toward it and the significant pleasures it delivers
boil down to its air of cunningly manufactured mystery, its
speakeasy-channeling pantomime of illicit, exclusive pleasure. The unveiling
of La Esquina belongs in a textbook for public relations and marketing
executives.
The subterranean chamber opened in mid-July
without a listed phone number or a clearly marked entrance. The
aforementioned portal is inside a taqueria that says "Corner Deli" - La
Esquina means "the corner" - and bears, in addition to the words "No
Admittance," the words "Employees Only."
Those are bogus caveats in a benign
conspiracy that, early on, fueled insidery Internet chatter about this
enigmatic taco belle with its unspoken identity and undisclosed location. On
one Web site, clues to La Esquina's whereabouts included an anagram of its
name.
The look of the underground bar area and
dining room dovetails with the furtive shtick. Within weathered brick walls
are wrought-iron gates that recall the bars of an ancient prison cell,
chandeliers that hold fat wax candles and murals made with tiles painted in
Mexico. If the Phantom of the Opera hired Zorro as an interior designer and
asked him for something in contemporary Torquemada, this might be the
result.
The adjacent kitchen produces food not only
for this netherworld hacienda but also for an attractive street-level cafe
with an entrance around the corner. It operates under the same ownership and
is clearly marked La Esquina.
I visited the cafe as well as the vault.
What I ate in both places was always serviceable, sometimes distinguished
and less frequently exemplary.
As invested as it is in its pose, La
Esquina also cares about its ceviches, soups, tostadas, salads and main
courses, including chipotle-glazed shrimp, spit-roasted chicken and steamed
mussels.
It uses discernibly fresher herbs,
vegetables and other ingredients than many other Mexican restaurants, and it
doesn't resort to easy cheats: oceans of salsa, tides of sour cream, eddies
of guacamole. Its kitchen exerts a lighter touch, exemplified by the very
fine corn tortillas for its taquitos and the equally fine flour tortillas
for its quesadillas.
But its kitchen, supervised by Richard
Ampudia, who also runs Caf้ Habana, and Jim McDuffee, doesn't always cook
with care or verve. Chicken and steak taquitos had stringy meat. Shrimp
tostadas were excessively salty. A side of black beans was a watery
wasteland.
That spit-roasted chicken was overdone and
the carne asada - grilled sirloin with a chimichurri-style sauce of parsley,
cilantro, jalape๑o and more - was dull.
But there are enough highlights to create
the possibility of a charmed meal from start to finish. Begin with the
chorizo quesadilla, followed by a tostada with lump crab meat and avocado in
a chipotle mayonnaise.
Move on to a main course of baby back ribs
rubbed with chili pepper, star anise and cinnamon, among other ingredients,
then cooked in a vacuum pouch before receiving a chipotle and guava glaze
during a climactic grilling. This process yielded luscious results.
Make sure to try sides of grilled corn and
of "gratin de rajas," which combines roasted poblano peppers with Yukon gold
potatoes and Manchego and Cotija cheeses. It was terrific, as was a sandwich
of roasted chicken, avocado and chipotle mayonnaise that was available in
the cafe but not below. The menus are slightly different.
So are the moods. The underworld has more
attitude and courts more chaos, to the point of being off-putting at times.
On some visits, I felt rushed by servers whose outward affability concealed
a furious determination to liberate tables for the welling crowd at the bar.
But those servers demonstrated considerable
knowledge about, and enthusiasm for, La Esquina's spectacular selection of
about 100 tequilas. After a shot or two, the smartly chosen music - Nina
Simone, Soul II Soul, Nouvelle Vague - seems to swell louder, but not so
loud that eavesdropping becomes impossible.
My tardy friend overheard several young
women ask a waiter if the vault could be breached without a reservation. He
told them that they were probably attractive enough to manage it, but that
there were no guarantees.
I bet that the hedged forecast thrilled
them, and that they circled back nights later to join a crowd hungry for
more than fried plantains and cactus salad.
La Esquina
*
106 Kenmare Street (Cleveland Place), SoHo;
(646) 613-7100.
ATMOSPHERE A main dining room and bar area
in a dimly lighted subterranean vault, as well as a smaller, separate
street-level cafe and a taqueria.
SOUND LEVEL In the vault, extremely loud
when crowded.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Chorizo quesadilla;
huitlacoche quesadilla; crab meat tostadas; fish taquito; baby back ribs;
grilled whole red snapper; grilled corn; poblano pepper gratin; bread
pudding.
WINE LIST Concise, international and
affordable. More impressive is the vast selection of tequilas and an array
of rums.
PRICE RANGE In the cafe, soups, salads,
sandwiches, tacos, quesadillas and main courses, $6 to $14. In the
subterranean dining room, soups, small plates, taquitos and tostadas, $6 to
$9; main courses, $13 to $22.50; desserts, $6.
HOURS For the upstairs cafe, noon to 4
p.m., and 6 p.m. to midnight, every day; for the downstairs, 6 p.m. to
midnight.
RESERVATIONS Not taken for the cafe. Call
two weeks ahead for downstairs.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Cafe at street level;
special elevator to downstairs dining room and accessible restroom there.
WHAT THE STARS MEAN:
(None) Poor to satisfactory
* Good
** Very good
*** Excellent
**** Extraordinary
Ratings reflect the reviewer's reaction to food ambience and service, with
price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to
change.
