Cochinita

Photo: Michael Allin

WHAT THE....?!?!

Again. When I lived in Clinton Hill, just ONE YEAR AGO, we had to walk for years to find a decent place to eat/drink/not do our laundry. Now, it seems, the neighborhood has decided to wake up, stretch, and put on a decent outfit. First Hot Bird, followed by Fulton Grand, then Brooklyn Victory Garden (BVG is so great!) Then came Beny's, Hanson Dry, and Dean Street. And now THIS!?

According to Grub Street,

“I’m a gringo preaching the taco gospel,” says Los Angeleno Adam Frank, a former event planner and gallery director who soft-opens the taco shop Cochinita on Friday. Frank is willing to concede that New Yorkers’ understanding of Mexican cuisine has progressed “beyond the ingredients for nachos,” but ascertains that there’s still plenty of work to be done. He makes the process relatively painless, though: You order your $3.50 tacos by penciling in a form, checking off fillings, sides, and condiments. Then a cashier rings it all up on an iPad — a transaction we imagine wasn’t much in evidence in the Mexican wholesale-market food stalls that inspired the shop’s design. The corn tortillas are made in house, and the pork in the signature taco filling, the Yucatán specialty cochinita pibil, is humanely raised. (Humane treatment extends to vegetarians, as well, via a few meat-free options.) There’s flan for dessert and beer on the way.

Cochinita, 922 Fulton St., nr. St. James St., Clinton Hill; 718-789-7700

Humrph. Good luck trying to get everyone to my new, fancy, hood now, huh?