El Cantinero

[Borrowed photo from Grub Street. Ours are coming soon]

After all of the hubbub surrounding El Cantinero in the past week between the Village Voice’s Robert Sietsema saying that El Cantinero was the last bastion of hope for TexMex and Grub Street’s Daniel Laurer thinking it’s terrible, I figured you might want my opinion on the matter. I’ve responded on twitter and left comments on those blogs, but you might have looked and found that we don’t have a review up. That’s because I went before this whole NachosNY fun began, and the nachos left me so uninspired that I figured that was a bad way to start a website. In order to serve the NachosNY community, I felt the need to give my full feeling: so, yesterday, I went.

With media director Jon at my side, we first attempted to take advantage of the generous happy hour ($4 beers). The host suggested it might be too busy, he was half right. There was no empty tables, but that could be due to a lack of them. There was however, plenty of flashing green and red lasers.

After heading back down, we disappointed our waiter by only ordering beers and an order of regular nachos. While we waited for them we ate chips and salsa and then Sietsema’s favorite fajitas came by and produced enough fog to start a KISS tribute show.

After the smoke cleared our nachos arrived in pizza style format. Each chip had a scoop of refried beans, melted cheese, a jalapeño, and splash of salsa. On the first bite, I noticed the burnt flavor on my chip, forgettable beans and cheese and an unenjoyable straight from the can jalapeño. So the jalapeño was the first to be taken off the rest. While I ate them, I, much like Sietsema transported to the 1890s, transported to an earlier time: the last time I ate there. I left uninspired and paid $7 for Tecate.