Cielito NYC

For a Taste of Sinaloa, Grab a Seat at This Queens Cocktail Lounge | Eater NY

"Set on busy 36th Avenue, this divey but elegant cocktail lounge glows with blue neon, a foliage-bedecked bench for photos, and an interior motif of skeletons, red roses, and brass rails while Sinaloan banda from groups like Grupo Firme and Grupo Diez 4tro plays from an unseen system. Manager Alex Arias, who grew up in Culiacán, and chef América Rodriguez have assembled what I found to be the broadest menu of Sinaloan food in the city, with a few Andean touches such as a giant grilled octopus tentacle served with chorizo aioli, minted pistachio sauce, and acai berry mayo. I enjoyed a Mazatlan-style red aguachile ($21) — shrimp and octopus served in a volcano-stone molcajete with cucumber, avocado, and lightly pickled purple onions — and sampled the levanta muertos ceviche ($22), a much spicier mixed-seafood version advertised as an aphrodisiac. The chilorio tacos ($14) arrived three to an order on flour tortillas with an incendiary green salsa and porky beans slathered on the tortillas (though the beans got a bit lost), the machaca tacos ($15) showcased shredded meat with a micro-scramble of eggs, and the birria came as a perfect quesabirria with flour tortillas dripping with melted white cheese; other Sinaloan antojitos included tacos gobernador and tacos canasta. Presenting this food in a cocktail lounge has advantages over a taqueria: there are 19 cocktails — mainly tequila and mezcal — and my favorite was the mezcalita de tepache ($17), sometimes accompanied by a small snifter of straight tepache as a chaser, which brightens the richer flavors of chilorio and machaca." - Robert Sietsema