Before I started working for newspapers, I thought that being a food critic conferred upon one a certain kind of power: the ability to strike fear into the hearts of restaurant employees and send them scurrying to do one’s bidding, like in the scene in Ratatouille when Anton Ego finally comes to the restaurant, or the part in Ruth Reichl’s critic-in-disguise memoir Garlic and Sapphires when she finally gets so disgusted with a restaurant’s snooty service and terrible food that she pulls off her wig and unleashes her famous long, dark mane —and mythic New York Times-enhanced superpowers.
At the new restaurant he’s allowed himself room to expand—and simultaneously return to his roots at Carnivale. The menu wanders more widely around Mexico—mixiotes from Mexico City, barbacoa from the Caribbean coast, and caldo de mariscos, a seafood soup from Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico—and then leaves altogether, venturing down to South America. There are arepas from Colombia, ceviches from Peru, seafood grilled a la plancha from Argentina, and, at the bar, caiparinhas from Brazil.
The octopus, when it finally does arrive, though, is worth waiting for. Served in olive oil mixed with garlic and chiles, the tentacles are crisp and caramelized outside, firm without being rubbery inside. It comes with smooth, tender, lemony potatoes that soak up the extra olive oil. The only bad thing about it is that it leaves you yearning desperately for more, since the portion’s only about ten bites, potatoes included.
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