TINY BITES OF PERFECTION

Yesterday, the weather was in a word ... bangin'. It was still 85 degrees when I left the office at 6:30 so Meena and I had no real choice but to explore the hood and dine out last night.

After a bit of discussion, we landed at famed local super Mexican spot, Mercadito.

I'm not sure wha the deal is with HIGH-end Mexican in New York. At home (or nearly everywhere else in the nation I think) you can get some solid Mexican food for crazy cheap nearly anywhere. In New York, there are only a few cheap Mexican spots. The rest are like, crazy high-end and feature tiny tacos and margaritas with tequila that rivals some single malt scotch in price. It's a weird trend. Sometimes I hate it. In the case of Mercadito, however, I think it works.

We did what most people do at Mercadito and ordered some margaritas and a couple flights of the mini-tacos. They're not called mini-tacos. They're just tacos. But they're definitely mini-tacos.

Oh, we also started with the guacamole tasting. They had mango, pineapple and regular. I really like the mango because it was smoky and sweet. Meena was a fan of the pineapple. It had a little more kick and a nice pineapple flavor.

For tacos, we tried three sets of four:
- pastor (chile ancho-chile guajillo rubbed pork, grilled pineapple, chile de arbol salsa)
- estilo baja (beer battered fish of the day, mexican style cole slaw chipotle aioli)
- camaron shrimp (avocado, roasted garlic-chile chipotle mojo)

They were all really good and it was hard to pick a favorite. I think meena really liked the camaron the best. I was a fan of the pastor. It was a bit too salty, but the spice and the pork were really fantastic. I ripped off a photo from New York Mag and they, like us, had the estilo baja. Really delicious.