New York, Brooklyn included, exists within a sort of Mexican food black hole. Either you have to hunt far and wide for the good stuff (like Chavella’s), be prepared to pay NYC prices for street food (like $9 carnitas tacos at Bonita) — or hold your breath until the Red Hook Ball Fields reopen (latest, most optimistic assessment: mid-June).
A few Red Hook vendors have set up shop at the Brooklyn Flea, but you can also satisfy your south of the border cravings in north Brooklyn, on a stretch of Manhattan Ave. in Greenpoint filled with Mexican and South American restaurants.
Papacito’s [NEW] (no phone, 162 Huron St. at Manhattan Ave., behind the M & W Laundromat) Cody Utzman, formerly of Brooklyn Label, opened this place — basically a concrete patio with brightly painted walls, a cinder block bar and some big picnic tables — on a dime and a summer prayer. The food is not authentic Mexican, but the guacamole is delicious, the tacos are satisfying, and one of the girls sharing our picnic table favorably compared the vegetarian burritos to the seed of God, but in less delicate terms. Oh, and the crowner (that stood in the way of noting Papacito’s hours)? You can get a 32 oz. Tecate in a bucket of ice served with a pile of lime wedges.
