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Usually "jam-packed", Steve Hanson's "party" Mexicans host "major bar scenes" that can overwhelm the "solid" enough eats; they're renowned for "killer" guacamole made tableside, "muy excellente" margaritas and a "slow" but "exceptionally attractive" staff; P.S. an East Midtown branch is in the works.
Dos Caminos is the new Mexican bar-raiser by Steve Hanson. Mr. Momentum, partnered here with John McDonald, sets the former home of The Globe spinning on the hot Park Avenue South eat-out strip. Architects George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg (Blue Fin) turn the deep, L-shaped, 275-seater into a warm, modern, artfully ethnic escape. Glance in the window and decide it's fun. Step inside and it's almost magic.
Thirty hand-carved, log like wooden pendants, lit from within, join rustic tin lanterns over a series of Aztec-accented drinking and dining areas in different color schemes. Decorative screens demark the more secluded short side of the L. Its walls are whimsically covered in sheets of stamped-tin bricks embossed with a wood pattern.
Mr. Hanson's trademark service team is personable, bright and helpful, from greeters to busboys. They roll carts to tables to assemble guacamole to order, using ripe Hess avocados. Chips and warm mini-tortillas are for scooping from lava stone bowls in the shape of pigs.
Tequilas are individually described in brief but useful notes, such as "Eat the scorpion!" on the Caballeros Scorpion mezcal. You won't forget it, or Dos Caminos.
"The trouble with black napkins," my stylishly dressed friend chuckles over lunch at Dos Caminos, "is that you can't tell where the napkin leaves off and the dress begins."
At stylishly bedecked Dos Caminos, the fun is guessing where owner Stephen Hanson's fancy ends and chef Scott Linquist's begins. In fact, the place pioneers a new culinary style: Hanson-Mexican fusion.
That's no slight. Hanson-Asian fusion clicked at Ruby Foo's. He takes the Mexican plunge drenched in glory from his Italian smash, Fiamma. Dos Caminos, or "two roads," takes a shrewd middle road.
It's made for people like me who dread Mexican food in New York. Puebla-born Nieto hones Mexican ingredients to Flatiron taste without sacrificing their sun-baked vibrancy. Some dishes are worth writing home to Guadalajara about. And I'll take his clean presentations over messy "regional" concoctions often peddled in the name of authenticity.
Dos Caminos has "party time" written all over it. Its 250 seats sprawl over three rooms in gleaming tones of gold, ochre and orange. The big middle room boasts cozy booths, "Aztec-like" decorative screens and Vegasy ceiling fixtures. Avoid the rear annex - Siberia in "a sea of indirect blue Yves Klein light."
For a place offering 100 - count 'em, 100 - tequilas, Dos Caminos is sober enough once you're past the madhouse bar. Start with dynamite guacamole ($12), made tableside with properly ripe avocado and a wallop of cilantro.
Park Ave. South has a new upscale Mexican restaurant, and the young scenesters are piling in for well-crafted drinks and wildly uneven food.
Even for those with reservations, the dinner rush at Dos Caminos (the 11th Steve Hanson restaurant) can be grueling if you're asked to step to the bar for a cocktail. This is problematic when the bar, like a mirage that you see but can't get to, is surrounded by a crowd juicing up with Sammy Hagar tequila and prickly pear margaritas.
But the center of the action is the noisy, action-packed main dining room, which is colored in earthy oranges and brown. This opulently decorated work of art shimmers with light cast by hand-carved wooden lanterns, metal lamp shades and tin-framed mirrors. Booths, curved benches with pillows and big round tables (250 seats in all) mean you can bring the entire entourage.
The equally ambient, but sexier "silver room," off to the right, is lined with wooden panels projecting fractured blue light. Amid this sensory overload, you'll be happy even if you wind up on the sedate leather banquette in the attractive but understated area across from the maddening bar.
Regardless, the first word your waiter will say is "Guacamole!" Just say yes, and watch as the simple recipe is concocted tableside with ripe avocado, cilantro, tomatoes and a choice of salsas.
The flamboyant Mexican menu is like a tour through a market hung with a rainbow of chilies, including ancho, costeno, jalapeno and serrano. As you explore multiregional flavors and sample fancy tequilas - there are 140 to choose from, served with an excellent fresh tomato chaser- remember that Dos Caminos means two roads and that Robert Frost is not the only one sorry he could not travel both.
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