METRO TACO
12:47 PM
• 102-15 Metropolitan Avenue
• Forest Hills, NY 11375
• (347) 494-4947 •
Sitting just around the corner from 71st on Metropolitan Avenue is one of the neighborhood's newcomers, Metro Taco. A new, different kind of Mexican restaurant. See, it's not Mexican the way Five Burros or El Coyote is Mexican. It's not cantina Mexican. It's Mexican as filtered through the lens of Williamsburg. And, for the record, that's a good thing.
Inside, a bookcase divides the dining room from the bar, which isn't big and serves more as a waiting room than a dining area, though I did plunk myself down there one quiet weekday for a meal. The walls are crisp and bright white. Patio lights line the ceiling evoking the illusion of dining at a Club Med. If only they painted the ceiling light blue... Metro Taco doesn't take reservations, so on a weekend, at a popular time, expect to wait for about an hour, as I did, with twenty twenty-somethings. On a weeknight, you'll get a table right away. Metro Taco may have a bar, but it isn't one. The music isn't loud, the patrons don't get drunk and wander home lit like candles doused in vodka. The neighbors won't be kept up past 10pm, when the doors close.
The menu is small. No great big phone book of enchiladas and fajitas. There are some appetizers, some entrees, and a selection of the eponymous tacos. A small cocktail list exists, as well some beer and sangria-on-tap. Having time to kill, Lutsy nursed a Sangria on her first trip here, which we both liked, while I stuck with the local favorite, a Finback IPA. For the record, service on this, the busy night was, in a word, poor. The staff was very friendly, but to call it slow and disjointed would be polite. Once we were seated, I ordered an Old Fashioned (because I'm a sophisticated person and that's what we do), while Lutsy ordered the most popular drink on the menu, the Pink Panther, a tiki bar vodka-based favorite made with grenadine and pineapple. If I saw one person drink this, I saw twenty. The Mezcal negroni, which I got when I returned alone, was not, sadly, very good. Strong enough to strip paint. But I'll never get it again.
I've heard some people complain that the portions are small, especially for the price. Each taco dish comes with two tacos, and depending on what you order, that could mean each taco costing you seven bucks. But while that seems true on paper, it's not. The food at Metro Taco is filling and cheap enough that you could get a taco plate and get an appetizer or a side dish and still not break $20. Plus, these complainers clearly never ordered the El Burrito Gordito, which clocks in at two pounds worth of pork, chorizo, rice, beans, and jalapeno. I'm desperately trying to fit into the jeans I owned two years ago, so I can't attest to whether I can recommend it or not, but the guy at the table next to me told me that it was pretty good, and took most of it home.
The Salsa Flight appetizer is a selection of four salsas and a basket of ginormous (each "chip" is about six inches long) house made tortilla chips. Way too much food, and way too little salsa. Honestly, I love the concept. But in practice, the salsas blend into each other and get forgotten and the plastic cups the salsa comes in feels both wasteful and cheap. If I ran the restaurant, I'd offer diners a choice of salsa, and if I ever order it again, I'm just going to select one and ask them to give me four times as much in a soup bowl. And I'm going to split it with the table, because this could be a meal on its own. I fully endorse the Adobo Brussels, an adobo-seasoned Brussels sprouts appetizer with a dusting of cheese and topped with pickled onions. It's one of those perfect-dishes. It feels healthy, it's hearty, it tastes great, it's unique. The pickled onions add that tangy blast that one wouldn't expect until it happens and the dish is spicy enough to give your mouth a tickle without causing any discomfort.
Lutsy ordered a Quesadilla, grilled chicken, peppers, onion, and cheese. This is a pretty standard dish, served in a pretty standard way. It wasn't bad, though it didn't break any new ground either. Will people get off their wobbly old chair at Dirty Pierre's and go to Metro Taco instead? That remains to be seen. I ordered the Mexico City Halal entree, a riff on the halal cart meals of chicken and rice with hot sauce and white sauce that NYC has become famous for. This one comes with a wild rice blend and huge topping of avocado and you know what? It's really good! If you want something both different and familiar, you aren't gonna do much better than this. Seriously. In fact, I'm starting to crave it now.
Tacos are Metro Tacos thing, but they're some of the more weak menu items. I won't say that they're bad tacos, because they aren't. And I won't say that you'll get better tacos at Chipotle or Five Burros, because you won't. Still, I predict that the line at the little taco cart outside of Citibank won't be getting shorter any time soon. I'm one of those people who routinely orders his hamburgers with an over-easy egg bleeding its guts out between the meat and the bun, so I had a lot of hope for the CEC tacos. Chorizo, quail egg, and cheese. But mostly, all I tasted was chorizo. That's fine. I like chorizo. But the chorizo was strong enough to drown out the other flavors. The Pulled Pork tacos were a little better. Served with a sweet and tangy pineapple chili salsa, they had a little more going on. They had depth, if you know what I mean. Oddly though, the best of the tacos that I tried were the ostensibly plain-juana Roast Chicken tacos. There was some pulled white meat chicken, some avocado, some salsa, some onion, some pico de gallo, and none of the flavors were fighting for dominance. They just played nice and this wound up giving me the most joy, albeit at the expense of giving me the least thrill. Still, I should have asked for another lime wedge.
Something that Metro Taco embraces is the vegetarian diet. About a quarter of the menu, which is already small, is vegetarian. In fact, on the day that I was nursing my beer and Brussels sprouts at the bar, I sat beside two women, one of whom was a vegetarian chef who specifically took her decidedly not vegetarian friend out to dinner at Metro Taco for the vegetarian dishes. If the exultations that I overheard were any evidence, they both had a good meal.
So Metro Taco scores an A+ for atmosphere and presence. Despite my criticism that not everything on the menu is great, everything on the menu (that I tried) is good. I've complained for years that Forest Hills needs more restaurants that not only serve good food, but create good food. New dishes. Not just storefronts. I have a feeling that once the growing pains of opening from scratch smooth over, the chefs there will find more interesting dishes to come up with. At least I hope so.
In the meantime, if you want to check out a fun, casual, different, hip place nearby where the music isn't blasting and you can actually have a conversation and don't feel like you're eating dinner in the restaurant of a dance club (Mojo, I'm coming over to you soon) then I think Metro Taco should be on your list.
Sides average $6. The burrito gordito is the priciest thing on the menu at $24. Everything else from entrees to tacos to "shareables" (appetizers) averages $13.
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