We Should Go

chris crowley rec Cocina Consuelo feels like a fonda, those homey Mexico City lunch counters, and it has a friendliness that can’t be manufactured. When chef-owner Karina Garcia arrived one morning last week, she cheerfully greeted her customers — “Hi!” “Good morning, what’s up?” — like they’d been coming since they were kids. The restaurant started as a pandemic pop-up, and it’s decorated as exuberantly as the apartment where Garcia and her husband Lalo Rodriguez first hosted those meals. During dinner, they serve mole negro and tortitas de calabaza; during the daytime hours it’s tortillas with a fried egg and salsa roja; sturdy little picaditas piled high with big crumbles of queso fresco, crema, and chorizo verde with enough cilantro to count as your daily greens; a masa pancake that’s thicker than an entire stack of diner flapjacks. Capped with fruit compote (recently blackberry, now apple), it’s served, like the version that went viral for Golden Diner, in a pool of amber honey butter. With a mug of café de olla, it’s good enough to make new memories. —Chris Crowley

chris crowley said squash pancake was good

Chris Crowley rec The first thing you notice when eating at Besa Grill is that it has some good meat. This is one benefit of grafting a restaurant onto a butcher shop next door. Besa is located on a Bronx block where locals linger on weekday afternoons over espresso and burek at the bakery, adding to the Old World feel. Inside, it’s brightly lit and sparsely decorated, with a few paintings and two miniature boxing gloves (one each for Albania and Kosovo) on the walls. Two employees run the show, and one frowned when sharing the news that there was no fli, the dairy-rich layered crêpe, that day. There are other reasons to smile. Like the mixed grill, which comes with four stubby links of qebaba, two plump patties of qofte, and a piece of fatty, salty suxhuk. The smell of smoke is one sign you’re in good hands. Another is the vibrantly red tomato — not the pale, watery pieces I’ve had at another Albanian grill nearby. All the sausages are very nicely grilled, lightly charred and still very juicy inside, and removed from the flames at just the right time. (Just ask for a side of red-pepper sauce.) Along with the tomato, the plate comes with a few pieces of bread, cucumber, and an excellent shredded cabbage salad (which is worth ordering separately) and lightly vinegared potato salad. —Chris Crowley

crab fried rice

they told me they have ethiopian coffee roasted in ethiopia???

Recommended by Marti from bookclub - she's Argentinian