Halfway Through The Pete Wells NYC Restaurant 100

The best tacos in New York? Plus: I eat an actual salad.

Today, I feel born again in the taco, because I’ve finally hit restaurant 50 in NY Times food critic Pete Well’s top 100 restaurants in New York City. How did I do it without dying? I want to give a shout out to my main drug, Metformin, which helps me process sugar differently or something like that.

Restaurant #49 was Taqueria Ramirez in the neighborhood the local bearded gentry calls “Greene-pointe.” Ramirez is known for the suadero taco, suadero being a belly-adjacent cut of beef that I’ve eaten crap-loads of in Mexico City. It’s excellent at Ramirez (everything is), but I really went nuts for the tripa, which may be the silkiest tripe I’ve ever had anywhere, including Rome’s Testaccio abattoir district.

I agree with Wellsy about the salsas being just okay by Mexico standards. You can’t have everything in an east coast taqueria, but this comes damn close. Ramirez is my new safe space. Oh, and Greenepointe has some excellent coffee too, the espresso at Sweetleaf really hits the spot. And when you’re ready to leave the nabe, take a ferry back to Manhattan. Classy.

For the 50th restaurant on the Wells list, I, of course had to have Albanian.  Cka Ka Qellu of the Bronx, now has a place in a part of Midtown called Turtle Cay or Murray East or something, and this place is exceptional.

I am not known as a salad eater, but this cucumber tomato thing just dribbled down my chin. Next to it, though, is the kamjak which I can’t even begin to describe. Butter? Cream cheese? This is Kosovar crack is what it is, and dipping hunks of their delicious bread into it is a meal in itself. I’m gonna drop by soon and eat the mantia dumplings in yogurt sauce and maybe an adorable veal sausage or two.

Till next time, dear eater/reader.