Restaurant Review: Elevated Mole and Mezcal at Claro | The New Yorker

"In Gowanus I found Claro, a new Mexican restaurant whose name—Spanish for “clear” and colloquially “of course”—feels apt: chef T. J. Steele, a white American who splits his time between New York and Oaxaca, is intentionally challenging the notion that Mexican food must be inexpensive and informal by using high-quality ingredients, making everything from scratch, and paying rent in a recently gentrified neighborhood. I enjoyed a tuna tostada reminiscent of Contramar: a tortilla toasted until golden and crunchy, spread with gently mashed avocado, topped with luscious pink cubes of raw yellowfin, juicy wedges of winter’s last Cara Cara oranges, and shards of bubbly chicharrón (one costs $24). Heirloom corn is nixtamalized in-house daily for slightly fatter Oaxacan memelas loaded with wild mushrooms and epazote or chorizo and potatoes; shreds of Steele’s own quesillo might top shrimp tacos or a salad of tender leek tops, red cabbage, carrot fronds, and pea shoots tossed in an herby dressing made with ground chapulines. Steele usually offers several moles—a sweet but balanced rust-colored rojo blanketing pork cheek, a negro cooked twice as long served over grass-fed short rib, and a smoky mole chocolate cake—and mezcal is treated like wine (a knowledgeable bartender walks through tasting notes for about fifty varieties), like whiskey in boilermakers, and in cocktails; the leche totochtin, a savory milk punch for which the spirit is washed in duck fat, is emblematic of the adventurous program (and yes, some mezcal is even distilled with a raw chicken or turkey breast hanging over it). Dishes run $13–$32." - Hannah Goldfield