"After a year of rent crises and restaurant closings, Alfredo Torres has just these words to say: “Thank God for birria.” Torres is the most recent owner of La Flor de Izucar Café, a restaurant in Sunset Park that he took over from his parents last April. His mother and father opened La Flor in the 1990s, at a time when gorditas, enchiladas, and combination plates with a side of rice were the stars of Mexican-American cooking. Three decades later, the restaurant’s menu had not changed much, Torres says, even though the Mexican dishes that customers sought out had. An update was in order." - Luke Fortney