Cosme, New York

Enrique Olvera's Cosme is 2015's top NYC restaurant

The NY Times ranked Cosme its number one restaurant, thanks to Enrique's innovative take on Mexican cuisine

There’s a section, off to one side of the menu at Enrique Olvera’s acclaimed Manhattan restaurant, Cosme. Under the dismissive rubric Are We Still Doing This? Olvera offers diners guacamole and corn chips.

Some of the city’s more traditional restaurant-goers might be put off by this gastronomic conceit, yet others, including the New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells, feels the demotion of guac and chips illustrates just what makes Enrique so great.

 

Enrique Olvera
Enrique Olvera

“Mr. Olvera built a restaurant that instantly made passé our salt-rimmed preconceptions about his native cuisine,” Wells writes in his NY Times 2015 rundown of the city’s best restaurants. Cosme occupies the number-one spot largely thanks to Olvera’s “subtle, sensitive and smart-looking explorations of Mexican tastes and traditions.”

 

Olvera's innovative take on tacos. As featured in Mexico from the Inside Out
Olvera's innovative take on tacos. As featured in Mexico from the Inside Out

Wells also praises the restaurant’s simple décor, its well-calibrated wine and drinks menu, including a great mezcal selection, “but the cooking is why reservations are hard to come by,” he concludes.

“The chef Enrique Olvera, who also operates Pujol in Mexico City, has shown an uncannily sharp instinct for what New Yorkers want when they go out for dinner,” the paper explains. “The cooking at Cosme is a thrill, largely because it sails right over ideas like tradition, authenticity and modernity.”

 

Olvera's Corn Husk Meringue.  As featured in Mexico from the Inside Out
Olvera's Corn Husk Meringue. As featured in Mexico from the Inside Out

Congratulations Enrique. For greater insight into what makes his take on Mexican food so special, including his recipe for Corn Husk Meringue, one of 2015’s most Instagrammed desserts, order a copy of his debut cook book, Mexico from the Inside Out here.