EMPELLON COCINA

Empellon Cocina is an upscale nuveau Mexican food that emanates haute cuisine with flavors of Mexico.  The ambiance is definitely trendy and the music is definitely rock and hip.  Chef Alex Stupak formerly from Alinea and WD-50 is the chef and founder of this new upscale restaurant located in the East Village. The ingredients are definitely Mexican integrated with elements of high culinary arts.

The dishes are meant to be shared (tapas style) and the suggestion is to have 5-6 dishes for 2.

Below:  A brief video to establish the sounds from this restaurant:

Here are the dishes we tried:

Grilled mini carrots with mole sauce

Left:  Ruby Red Shrimp with crispy masa, sea urchin (uni) mousse and lettuces.  This has a very delicate flavor.  The sea urchin mousse is at the bottom.

On the right is a gordita dish.  As you can see, it's not your average version.

MELTED TET ILLA CHEESE WITH LOBSTER FRITO AND KOL
(Kol - Yucatan style white sauce)
THIS WAS OUR FAVORITE.  It reminds me of a quesadilla since you have to scoop
the cheesy sauce into your freshly made tortillas.

Pictured on the left:  Squid with heirloom potatoes, chorizo, mayonnaise and black mole.  (Their mole is made with chilliuacle negro plus 29 other ingredients)

LAMB SWEET BREAD served with chorizos (their version).
Another favorite of ours that we highly recommend to order.

And to conclude our dinner, for dessert, we chose the Vanilla Marquesote above.  It was served with paper thin slices of caramelized dry oranges, Pilloncillo cafe con leche ice cream.  It's a "vanilla" cake based dessert.  The crumbly thing you see is like crushed toasted buttered-sugar granola.  (It probably isn't but if I were to make my version of this dessert that's what I'd do - sort of a knock-off copy of the dessert?).

http://www.yelp.com/review_share/oIr_P8xlpPtIoWzb-WfhhQ/review/tvReQtIXwV25XmD8NJ-2cg?fsid=7BcfiYs3SPPjlP7f453I9w

Empellon Cocina

105 1st Ave, New York, NY 10003