"Trace": Bay Ridge gets 'high end' Mexican cuisine.
Submitted by steve on Wed, 10/01/2008 - 11:02
Almost a year after Henry Grattan's, 3rd avenue's quaint Irish fireside pub, was sold lock 'n' stock to the Salty Dog consortium - Bay Ridge's much talked about high-end Mexican restaurant, 'Trace,' has finally arrived.
Eh, not so great.
Joe, Betsy, a few friends and I checked out Trace this weekend.
The menu was heavily loaded with fish and chicken. While I love fish and chicken, I don't care for Mexican chicken and fish is about the last thing I want to order in a Mexican restaurant. No burritos, enchiladas, tamales, chile or quesadillas here. And of course no combinations. I don't think I even saw beans on the menu.
There were only two or three items on the menu that even looked Mexican. One was guacamole but it tasted like, well, mashed avocado. Flavorless. The chips were a bit soggy as well. The salmon ceviche I ordered was a bit better but similarly bland. Like salmon sushi with a watered down lemon juice.
I got the sliced tuna. The tuna was okay and cooked to order but it tasted like they used a dry rub on it which was kinda chalky and, again, tasteless.
The pitchers of margaritas were better but not nearly up to par with Casa Pepe's "Cadillac" margaritas, which is several steps down from the gold standard: the old Caramba! restaurants in Manhattan.
I spent a few years in the "Mexican belt" (Texas and Colorado) so that's my expectation for good Mexican cuisine. For some odd reason, just as nowhere but NYC can do "NY pizza", NYC has yet to produce a decent Mexican restaurant. At any price. No kidding, the closest we have to authentic Mexican in Brooklyn is Taco Bell.
Anyway, with Trace's neighborhood competition being Cebu, Tuscany Grill and Chadwicks, I was surprised by the mediocrity of its cuisine. Maybe they're just after the bar crowd.