Mesa Coyoacan

The blue glass “fish tank” building at 372 Graham Avenue is host to the new Mexican restaurant, Mesa Coyoacan. Unlike the jarring aqua exterior, the interior is warm and homey, with wooden tables, salvaged wallpaper from the 1940s, chandeliers made from antique-style incandescent bulbs and actual family photographs.
The restaurant is the brainchild of Ivan Garcia, who was most recently a chef at the East Village Mexican eatery, Mercadito. On the menu you will find traditional Mexican dishes from tacos and ceviches to enchiladas and carne asada. Home-style is certainly the name of the game with a number of menu items carrying the tag, “family recipe,” and with house made tortillas, salsas, and moles. The name of the game is also upscale. While the recipes are traditional, look for ingredients like Berkshire pork—famous for well marbled cuts of meat—in the pork tacos.
I didn’t have the pork, but I did try both the fish tacos and the all-vegetarian cactus tacos. The fish tacos were made with grilled and marinated tilapia, which was flakey and flavorful. Those homemade tortillas do really make a difference and a light flavor and none of the rubbery texture of the store bought variety. The cactus taco was also very also good. Cactus, for those who haven’t tasted it, is a bit like a green bean crossed with okra in taste and texture. The tacos, which were three for $9, are good for a light lunch or dinner.

The enchiladas de mole at $12, and incidentally one of the secret family recipes, were also very good—the mole in particular.
The ceviche, the vuelve a la vida was a mix of octopus, shrimp, oysters, and scallops in a tomato salsa. The fish wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t mind blowing, and it seemed to be swimming i—and overwhelmed by—the overly sweet salsa, and when I think of ceviche, I like to think the fish should be the star attraction. It didn’t leave me with the buoyant, bright citrus taste that ceviches past have left me with.

Now, there is no one in the world pickier about Mexican food than Californians, so I made sure to bring a couple of them along with me. I wanted to see if they would turn up their noses and declare that New Yorkers don’t understand Mexican food. As a native Easterner, I can’t claim the same stubborn authority, but I can say for what it’s worth that the Californians liked it.
I too liked the food for the most part, but I must say that I missed a certain sense of fun that often comes with Mexican food. I usually think of tacos as being hand held and cheerfully messy, and plates of food that fill you up perhaps to the point of stuffed. Here the food is plated in a way that looks nice (though at times odd, like the ceviche in the parfait glass), but doesn’t make me think of home. That said, the food tastes authentic, and sometimes that’s enough.