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Usually "jam-packed", Steve Hanson's "party" Mexicans host "major bar scenes" that can overwhelm the "solid" enough eats; they're renowned for "killer" guacamole made tableside, "muy excellente" margaritas and a "slow" but "exceptionally attractive" staff; P.S. an East Midtown branch is in the works.
Dos Caminos is the new Mexican bar-raiser by Steve Hanson. Mr. Momentum, partnered here with John McDonald, sets the former home of The Globe spinning on the hot Park Avenue South eat-out strip. Architects George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg (Blue Fin) turn the deep, L-shaped, 275-seater into a warm, modern, artfully ethnic escape. Glance in the window and decide it's fun. Step inside and it's almost magic.
Thirty hand-carved, log like wooden pendants, lit from within, join rustic tin lanterns over a series of Aztec-accented drinking and dining areas in different color schemes. Decorative screens demark the more secluded short side of the L. Its walls are whimsically covered in sheets of stamped-tin bricks embossed with a wood pattern.
Mr. Hanson's trademark service team is personable, bright and helpful, from greeters to busboys. They roll carts to tables to assemble guacamole to order, using ripe Hess avocados. Chips and warm mini-tortillas are for scooping from lava stone bowls in the shape of pigs.
Pigs may be disappointed at Dos Caminos. Most plates are rich in sensory input without being overwhelming. Ancho-adobo marinated baby back ribs push that envelope, both in dimension and spicing. The "classic authentic Mexican with a modern touch" from executive chef and partner Scott Linquist and his top lieutenant, Ross Gill, is generally a nuanced and vibrant play on traditional themes. Habanero peppers are loosed just enough to keep you alert.
Among soups, salads and appetizers ($6 to $12), chicken tortilla soup is outstanding. Mexican chopped salad unites a dozen elements, from apples to olives. Chipotle flavors braised beef filling crispy corn tortillas, and roasted pork with avocado on crisp tortillas.
Three robust salsas accompany tacos with chicken, meat, seafood or mushroom centers. Test your mettle with pibil-achiote-marinated pork packaged with pickled red onions, fried plantains and habanero. Add habanero salsa to that one at your peril. Not even delicious sangria ($21 a pitcher) will put out that fire.
From the grill in the open kitchen come ribs, chicken and shrimp mole dishes, steak in a cascabel chili marinade, and tuna served with garlic-yucca mash and a salad of cactus and heirloom tomato. Poblano chili relleno gets novel treatment, filled with pulled pork, pears and apples, then roasted.
Be sure to order potato rajas en crema, a side of creamy potatoes with peppers, corn, cheese and onion. Mexican rice served with one main was dry and bland.
Delicate riffs on classic desserts ($5 to $8) are beautiful to behold, and so good I wanted them larger. Mole-flavored chocolate cake is a three-bite wonder, as is the flan.
Tequilas are individually described in brief but useful notes, such as "Eat the scorpion!" on the Caballeros Scorpion mezcal. You won't forget it, or Dos Caminos.
Dos Caminos
373 Park Ave. South
(between 26th and 27th Streets)
(212) 294-1000
"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 Scott Linquist'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.
"Mexican hot spot is borderline" by Lisa Amand
DOS CAMINOS, 373 Park Ave. So. at 26th St. (212) 294-1000. Open for lunch and dinner daily/ brunch Sundays. Dinner entrees: $16.50-$24. Most credit cards. Reservations suggested.
Park Ave. South has a new upscale Mexican restaurant, and the young scenesters are piling in for well-crafted drinks and wildly uneven food.
Even for those with reservations, the dinner rush at Dos Caminos (the 11th Steve Hanson restaurant) can be grueling if you're asked to step to the bar for a cocktail. This is problematic when the bar, like a mirage that you see but can't get to, is surrounded by a crowd juicing up with Sammy Hagar tequila and prickly pear margaritas.
But the center of the action is the noisy, action-packed main dining room, which is colored in earthy oranges and brown. This opulently decorated work of art shimmers with light cast by hand-carved wooden lanterns, metal lamp shades and tin-framed mirrors. Booths, curved benches with pillows and big round tables (250 seats in all) mean you can bring the entire entourage.
The equally ambient, but sexier "silver room," off to the right, is lined with wooden panels projecting fractured blue light. Amid this sensory overload, you'll be happy even if you wind up on the sedate leather banquette in the attractive but understated area across from the maddening bar.
Regardless, the first word your waiter will say is "Guacamole!" Just say yes, and watch as the simple recipe is concocted tableside with ripe avocado, cilantro, tomatoes and a choice of salsas.
Guacamole is supposed to be for two, but the pretty pottery dish offers enough for at least four. Since the charge for chips and salsa is $5, you're better off ordering an appetizer of tostaditas with chipotle-tomato roasted pork. In fact, every pork dish was dynamite, especially when paired with pickled red onions, black beans and tomatillo-habanero salsa.
The flamboyant Mexican menu is like a tour through a market hung with a rainbow of chilies, including ancho, costeno, jalapeno and serrano. As you explore multiregional flavors and sample fancy tequilas - there are 140 to choose from, served with an excellent fresh tomato chaser- remember that Dos Caminos means two roads and that Robert Frost is not the only one sorry he could not travel both.
Two ceviches I tried were lackluster: red snapper and scallops languished in a pool of juice, while big-eye tuna hardly melted in my mouth. I suggest starting with fish tacos, three little corn tortillas filled with grilled red snapper and cucumber-citrus slaw. Fire-roasted guajillo-piquin peppers made the hottest "diablo" chicken taco too scintillating for my palate.
I don't mind spending $16.50 on serviceable chicken enchiladas, but I was crestfallen when an entree of Chilean sea bass was dry, even with the creative contrast of jicama-pineapple salad and chayote gratin. Free-range chicken was the centerpiece of a plate of mole poblano, but the sauce and meat didn't marry, and I've had better in San Francisco's Mission District. Pumpkinseed mole with grilled, garlic-lime marinated shrimp, spicy rice and sauteed watercress was one fabulous example of chef Scott Linquist's modern spin on traditional preparations. Nieto, who hails from Puebla, Mexico, came to New York via Chicago's Adobe Grill.
Pastry chef Bryan Garcia, from Mexico City, adds zest to flan with orange-caramel sauce and pecan cookies. Like the house strawberry-mint cocktail, the fruitiest dessert is most impressive. Borrachito con Fruta was an airy, tequila-splashed fig cake wearing a scoop of papaya-strawberry sorbet, surrounded by plum, orange and nectarine salad. Chocolate torte, more mousse than cake, is delicious and decadent with rompope sauce (rum, milk, eggs and cream). Frothy Mexican coffee is (a good) one for the road.
If you don't know that Hanson also owns Blue Water Grill, Blue Fin and Fiamma, you'll find out when the waitstaff solicits your E-mail address and hands you a postcard listing the restaurants in the B.R. Guest empire. (A third Ruby Foo's is coming to Union Square, a sushi and jazz place to the Meatpacking District and another Dos Caminos uptown.) Less salesmanship and consistently better food would be much appreciated.
"Winning candidates for food capital dining" by Bob Lape
"Mexican merry-making, a young and zesty crown, and assertively seasoned eats, including guacamole made to order at your table, are the attractions..."
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