For lunch today, I took advantage of restaurant reviewer Robert Sietsema’s Cheap Chow Now! series for the Village Voice, which features capsule reviews of New York’s “100 best and most inexpensive restaurants.” Unlike similar guides to the city’s grub, Sietsema’s list includes places in all five boroughs and Jersey (only 35 of this year’s selections are in Manhattan) and spans a wide variety of ethnicities.
I decided to try his top-rated Tex-Mex place in Manhattan, which was Tulcingo del Valle Grocery, ranked #12 overall on the list. Here’s Sietsema’s review:
Named after a small town on the Oaxacan border, this humble Poblano hole-in-the-wall added a proper dining room recently. Skip the Tex-Mex in favor of the complex moles, of which the hometown version is really a soup, crawling with vegetables and dried chiles. Weekends, sample the superlative barbacoa (steamed goat).
The menu is large, so I asked the server what she recommended and ended up going with her suggestion, the mole poblano. The cocoa-based mole was rich and flavorful and the chicken was very moist. It was served with chips and nose-runningly spicy salsa, which you don’t usually get in a restaurant’s “default” salsa offering but which I appreciated. Large portions of pinto beans and rice accompanied the mole, as well as a basket of piping-hot tortillas.
The place isn’t great on decor or ambiance, but I was going for the food and the price, so I wasn’t too put-off by the depressing corporate-style drop-ceiling tiles or the strange choice of on-table greenery (bamboo plants unceremoniously stuck in water glasses).
I’ve noticed the best non-American food I eat is in restaurants that attract people the same nationality as the food, so it was a good sign when I noticed a lot of Spanish-speaking people chowing down. I was also pleased with a good sign of the restaurant’s cheapness: college students. There was a table of them near the door, loudly and excitedly discussing the benefits of cafe con leche, Lars van Trier and genetic manipulation.
Tulcingo del Valle Grocery
- 665 Tenth Ave. (at W. 47th Street)
- Meal 15/52: mole poblano, with basket of chips, salsa, rice and beans, and tortillas ($9.50).