Cabrito

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This colorfully tiled Mexican cantina is helmed by former Fatty Crab chef David Schuttenberg. “It’s food that I’m familiar with my whole life,” says the Arizona native, whose wife and mother-in-law are both Mexican and whose menu felt like “the food I was seeing at home.” That includes cemitas (traditional sandwiches like pollo milanesa), red-chili beef rib (his homage to Fatty Crab’s famous short ribs) and the restaurant’s namesake dish (slow-roasted goat with citrus-tequila salsa). Schuttenberg even worked closely with his mother-in-law to develop the restaurant’s homemade chorizo and green-chili sauce. Haute Mexican it ain’t, but “I felt like there was a gap that needed to be bridged—a hole-in-the-wall-type of place that you want to travel to and hang out at all night,” the chef says, referring to a recent wave of upscale Mexican joints. “I just wanted to take this space and turn it into the bridge of that gap.”

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Greenwich Village restaurants, New York restaurants, Mexican restaurants