Restaurant Review: Los Dos Molinos

A long, long time ago, when Uptown Mom was neither uptown nor yet a mom, she lived in New Mexico for several years.

The Land of Enchantment is, well, enchanting. It gets under your skin. Especially the food, which is a central part of life in New Mexico. New Mexico's "State Question," "Red or green?", refers to the type of chile you will be having on your food. (And yes, I do mean "chile". New Mexicans have made that very clear by directing their senator to enter the correct spelling into the Congressional Record.) (I just remembered that there is a third correct answer to the question "red or green" -- "Christmas" -- but I am never quite that indecisive about my New Mexican food.)

So we arrived in NYC (my hometown) in 2000 looking for New Mexican food. We tried so, so hard, for years and years, and couldn't find it. The closest we came was the enchiladas chile colorado at Alma and the green chili (sic) Sunday brunch at Superfine, both of which were actually pretty good but sadly incomplete as they did not come in the context of the whole cuisine. We don't eat pork, of course, but vegetarians do fine in New Mexican restaurants, and what we really wanted was somewhere where we could order our usual: cheese enchilada with red and chile relleno with green, and have sopapillas with honey and unsweetened iced tea. It didn't seem like such a tall order in a city with such an enormous diversity of cuisines, but we just couldn't find it. So my husband learned to make his own green chile, on the rare occasions that we could get Hatch green chile peppers from New Mexico (usually from friends who still had family there). Red is easier -- the dried red peppers can be found in NYC if you look hard enough -- but the green chiles, which must be transported cold, can only be obtained from friends who are flying back from New Mexico or by ordering them by fed ex overnight with dry ice at great expense. So sad we were! But we became resigned, and I think that for the past few years we haven't even tried to find it. We were defeated.

Then, we heard from some fellow UNM alums (my husband got a graduate degree while we were there) about Los Dos Molinos. And I am now so full and happy that I really don't care that this review has nothing to do with Harlem or kids. We had our enchilada "with red". We had our chile relleno "with green". We even had the sopapilla, which the New Mexicans had cautioned us were more akin to (Navajo) frybread, but which we found close enough to the real thing once we got them to serve the honey on the side. And we had iced tea, and a margarita. Oh, it was a revelation. The real thing.

Funny thing, everyone (including the New Mexicans we met) seems to go on about how extremely spicy the food is, and how the east coast natives can't take it. Our verdict was: it's exactly as we remember the food in New Mexico. Spicy but not out of control. As a New York native who was raised from infancy on Szechuan food (and learned to adore Indian and Thai as a teenager, although my parents never introduced me to it), I never found the spice level in New Mexico particularly difficult to handle -- this was pretty much the same. So yeah, it's spicy, but not out of control -- just good, honest, enchanting New Mexican food.

Too bad they have chile spelled wrong on their menu (at least the online version, we hardly looked at it in the restaurant because we knew what we wanted!).

Uptown Mom is going to lie down now and enjoy her food coma. Have a good night.

P.S. The babies enjoyed the sopapilla, tortilla chips, side of flour tortilla with side of sour cream, beans and rice, and milk in a glass. There was only one highchair. The big brother had other plans for the evening, but he'll have to learn to like it soon.

P.P.S. Warning: Closed Sundays.

P.P.P.S. If you can get your hands on some real New Mexican Hatch green chiles, they are an AMAZING addition to latkes.