La Palapa

It’s always fun to get the feeling that someone is excited about, even in love with, the food they make and serve. I met Magaritte Malfy, who makes her home in Williamsburg, one day last week at the East Village outpost of her restaurant La Palapa on St. Marks and First Avenue. She and Barbara Sibley are the chefs and co-creators of the restaurant, which also has a West Village counterpart on Sixth Avenue and W. 4th Street, and they have clearly fallen in love with Mexican cuisine.
The plan for La Palapa was hatched when Malfy and Sibley took a trip to Mexico City, where Sibley was born and raised, to set up an art show. The two have since traveled extensively throughout the country collecting authentic recipes from the towns and regions they visited. Authenticity is certainly the name of the game with dishes like the mole negro Oxaqueno requiring twenty-six ingredients, an of particular interest to the pair, are street foods and small plate dishes known as antojitos.
The afternoon I came in to see Malfy was clearly a busy one, but between checking on customers and deliveries, and making sure that everyone was well fed. She sat me down and brought me a hibiscus margarita. “Are you very hungry?” she asked me, then quickly told me not to worry she would send me out a couple things to taste.
Then began the parade of one delicious dish after another. Most of the plates I tried were from the antojitos menu, and many of them were dishes I have never seem anywhere else.
The first things to arrive at my table were the chalupas con chorizo casero and the jicama picante. Traditionally chalupas are tostado dish made by pressing corn masa into a shallow bowl shape, then frying and filling them with a variety of ingredients. Here it was chorizo, guacamole, queso fresco, and crema, all homemade. The jicama picante is a dish I have never seen on any menu before, and Malfy explained that she had found the recipe in the Yucatan. Usually I think of jicama the shredded stuff that gets thrown on top of salad, but here the fruit was sliced like French fries and served in chile piquin with a slice of lime. The refreshing crunch of the jicama is a good compliment to the kick of the salsa.
I have never had nopalitos or grilled prickly pear pads. I have had the pads cooked and sliced up in a taco, but never before served whole. The flavor was delicious, reminiscent of slightly tart asparagus.
Next up was the crepas de huitlacoche. When I was younger I remember shucking corn on the front porch with my family and every once and a while coming across one with black fungus hidden beneath the husk, which we always threw away. This is the huitlacoche, or black corn mushroom, which is considered a pest in the United States, and a delicacy in Mexico. What arrived to my table was a wonderful crepe stuffed with huitlacoche, corn, and poblano crema, covered and baked with queso Chihuahua. The flavor of the mushroom is like no other I have tasted and is at once sweet, savory, and earthy.
My meal was rounded out, with a plate of sweet plantain, again with the homemade cream and queso fresco. I was full to the brim at this point, and completely happy.
For many in New York, the preconceived notion of Mexican food is of heavy, greasy, cheese laden, and in short, Americanized Tex-Mex dishes. At La Palapa, a subtler, more complex vision of Mexican cuisine prevails. Taking a look at Sibley and Malfy’s new cookbook, Antojitos: Festive and Flavorful Mexican Small Plates one can see first hand the diversity of ingredients used to create complexities in flavor, from the myriad chiles, pumpkin seeds, tamarind, to avocado leaves and epazote.
The name La Palapa refers to the palm thatched huts found on Mexican beaches, and with food so good and artfully constructed it’s easy to let you mind drift away past the cream stucco walls, the punched tin folk art mirrors inside the restaurant, beyond the city, and on to the seaside and an relaxing, authentic, Mexico.