Ah! Chihuahua's

I have nothing but good things to say about this restaurant! Food good & the frozen margaritas are the best! The service is the best!

This is the best Mexican food I've found in the area. No tamales unfortunately. But still pretty good.

Take it from a Texan. The food rocks. Always order the queso.

I've only had the enchiladas suisas but they were great. I was impressed that the rice and beans were really good. The best mex I've had since I moved here from CA.

As my screen name says, I was born and raised in Texas, and guess what, so is the guy that started this restaurant. When I heard about this place I was a bit skeptical. But I tried it, and always bring my friends here. (going tonight as a matter of fact) It's not pretentious. It's not gourmet. It's not overly ambitions. But it IS...DAMN good, and the prices are great.

The menu looked authentic enough to lure me in. The location is pretty sweet too (caveat - around the corner from me). Thoroughly a hole in the wall; the service was slow, inattentive, but accommodating. Being that I was the only one in there for a 10 minute window (the slow period just before dinner rush), it was a little odd that the service was so aloof. That, I would say, was the only downside. Homemade corn chips and delicious, chunky, spicy salsa were supplied graciously to hold me over. The margarita (rocks) was pretty good, but lacked the requisite amount of ice. I ordered nachos, which didn't come, but received my enchiladas suizas (chicken) after a substantial wait. It was worth it. The enchiladas platter contained 3 generous enchiladas stuffed w. chicken, doused in green chile sauce, topped w. a white cheese (queso fresco?) and sour cream. Delicious. I was absolutely sated. Even the fact that the refried beans amounted to a paste and a pseudo-appetizing side of rice remained untouched, I was full and hooked on ah! chihuahua's. As with all scientific experiments, they must be repeated for validity, so the verdict is still out, but those enchiladas were effin' good.

Meals here are spotty, and I never trust ground beef or premade taco shells. However, there are glimmers of authenticity and old fashioned know-how if you look in the right places. The salsa is watery, yes (not necessarily the mark of a bad salsa) but flavored well and subtly authentic. The enchiladas are very passable as good mexican but, again, I avoid all ground beef. The rice (appropriately 'long grain', I plan to address this in my Blockheads review), beans, and chips are also passable to good, the combination of which is extremely hard to find in NYC. Rice is not supposed to be fancy, people, it's rice. Authentic rice is never bland, but never more than a complement, so let's not get carried away. And even one of my NYC favorites, Lupes, has chips that leave something to be desired. While you can't order everything on the menu, you can dance around certain weaker spots and come away having eaten good chips and salsa, a meat dish and satisfying rice and beans which is nothing to shake a stick at in this icy, barren mexican foodscape.