Photo Hungry!

I love food and I love pictures. Equipped with my iPhone camera, I'll take you on a culinary adventure through NYC and beyond. Let's start eating!

02.28

2013

Salvation Taco

We like April Bloomfield. My favorite burger in the city is the blue cheese burger at The Spotted Pig and The Breslin reigns as one of ATO’s favorite places to chill and grub in the city. But we might actually like April Bloomfield a little bit less after trying her self-admittedly unauthentic new taqueria in Murray Hill, Salvation Taco (so named because the space previously housed a Salvation Army store). You’ll definitely find no salvation in these tacos…. or any of the food for that matter.

The only saving grace: the food is pretty cheap. Not like taco truck cheap (not like taco truck good either), but definitely a step down price-wise from her other joints. Here’s a spin through a majority of the menu:

Chips and guacamole. Only standard in taste but hard on the wallet at $9 a serving!

Crispy chicken feet. Stingy on substance, full of cartilage and overly-aggressive in flavor.

Tomatillo and jicama salad - simple, bright and fresh. A pleasant break from the abuses of the other dishes.

Crispy pig ears. Appeared to be the same mix used on the crispy chicken feet, but these pig ears were gummier, chewier and quite a mouthful (which ATO preferred to the chicken feet). Expect to find pig ear stuck in your teeth hours after consuming….

Al pastor quesadilla. Tasty and nicely grilled, but nothing to write home about.

Kimchi pork belly pozole. In my opinion, this was the best dish on the menu. Hearty and complex, savory and addictive. The lime added a great crisp finish.

The tacos! From left to right: roasted cauliflower with curried crema, skirt steak with pecan and chipotle and Moroccan lamb on naan. The roasted cauliflower was my personal favorite. The rest were OK but not great.

The torta sandwiches, which all in all were disappointing and suffered from excessive salt, a want of texture and bad bread. Above is the grilled lamb tongue torta. The texture of this sandwich was especially off-putting.

Braised short rib torta. Mushy short ribs and mushy avocado = mushy sandwich.

Confit chicken thigh. Weirdly sweet, but not so bad in the end.

As is readily apparent, it wasn’t for lack of effort that we couldn’t find something on the menu that we really liked. Oh well, checked the box; now off the list forever!

Website: http://www.salvationtaco.com/

11.20

2012

Toloache

Toloache: our go-to Mexican spot in the area. Discovered by the first partner that I worked with at CSM, MR. He fondly dubbed it ”the clubhouse.” From then on out, we frequented regularly for work lunches. And then ATO and I discovered that we could enjoy it in the comforts of our own home via Seamless. We’ve been inseparable ever since.

So when our old friend LS was in town from London and she requested good Mexican food (which is apparently hard to come by across the pond), Toloache immediately came to mind.

The guacamole - always very good, but always very expensive ($13 an order!). Above is the Spicy version with tomato, red onion, chipotle and queso fresco (there’s also the Traditional version with tomato, onion, cilantro and serrano or the Fruity version with pomegranate, vidalia onion, mango, apple, peach, habanero and Thai basil). The very delicious complimentary salsa and chips are shown above as well.

We always end up ordering the tacos, which are like home-cooking to me now! The carne asada with tequila salsa borracha, above.

My absolute favorite: the garlic-chipotle shrimp with hearts of palm slaw and tamarind salsa.

Add some rice and black beans, or some corn-on-the cob dusted with cheese and chili powder, and you’ve got yourself a well-rounded meal!

Bonus: on Seamless, but not in the restaurant, they offer the most phenomenal chicken burrito (phenomenal because it’s freakin’ delicious but also because it’s the best bang for your buck on the menu!).

Vámonos!

Website: http://toloachenyc.com/media/toloache.html

Please don't judge me for all the crap (albeit delicious crap) that I put into my body. My only defense is that I run a lot, which is (partly) why I eat like this. For full disclosure, I don't eat anything that looks like it did when it was alive (no meat on bones, no shellfish out of the shell...you get it). Exception: mussels and clams. I don't eat any fish (except sometimes at nice restaurants). I don't eat raw meat and I don't eat any weird organs or offal (all of the foregoing, collectively, the "restricted foods"). Any comments related to the restricted foods are third party opinions (mostly from my adventurous better half, ATO).