There is something incredibly unnerving about 50 Plates. We’re all for nostalgia and down-home cooking and county-fair food made sophisticated, but when you start talking about grandmothers and Route 66 while looking exactly like a West Elm, you lose us.

It still manages to feel comfortable, despite the glaring white tables, the overly strategic lighting, and the pricey arrangements that our own grandmothers would have clucked their tongues at as “wasteful, and ugly besides.” In other words, it’s totally at home… [More]

Impressive Mexican kitchens often occupy humble digs, and La Sirenita is one of the city’s most impressive and most humble.

Entering this cozy space is like walking into a simple family kitchen. Spanish is as welcome as English. The menu is short and sweet; La Sirenita manages to stay focused, unlike the long, meandering, Mexican-American menu at La Bonita, the inferior competitor down Alberta (which nonetheless manages, somehow, to be more popular—ah, the wisdom of the masses).

The meats that fill La… [More]