Little Mexican Cafe

581 Main Street
New Rochelle, New York
914.636.3926
http://www.littlemexicancafe.com/

5 Second Summary:

Price Range- Entrees $7-16 (at time of posting)

Ambiance- South-of-the-Border traditional

Cuisine- Mexican (duh) 🙂

Hits- Delicious tamales, tomatillo sauce, generous salad portions, fresh avocado

Misses- Tough meat, fairly ho-hum and traditional flavors

After hitting rush hour traffic on the Hutch and a minor mishap involving quarters and parking meters, I finally sat down with my friend Lindsay at Little Mexican Cafe.  A resident in the area, she had ordered takeout from LMC often, but it was my first experience.

Our waiter was friendly but a bit exasperated when we chatted (a lot) rather than look at the menu (a little).  We started with tamales three ways: cheese-filled with a tomato-based sauce, beef with mole, and pork with tomatillo sauce.  The tomato sauce was chunky and sweet, the mole deeply chocolatey but not bitter or too spicy, the tomatillo- tart, tangy, and my favorite.

I had the Guadalajara platter: carne asada served with a crisp green salad and generous slices of avocado, rice, and beans.  The salad, although mostly iceberg lettuce, was a fairly large portion with tomato chunks and slices of red onion.  The ribeye meat was tough but tasty.  A professed carb-aholic, I finished the sticky rice down to the last grain.

Lindsay had the Enchilada platter: three stuffed tortillas with mole sauce and slathered with cheese, onion, and cream.  Rice and beans were served on the side.

For dessert, we went whole hog and ordered fried ice cream, which was vanilla coated with corn flakes, doused in a strong rum, set ablaze and extinguished tableside, and -finally- coated with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.

We mostly enjoyed picking the corn flakes from the ice cream but didn’t eat much more than that.  The intense flavor of burned alcohol was tough to ingest.

All in all, Little Mexican Cafe was a nice place to meet a friend for a drink and a quick bite.  Nothing stood out as incredible or awful… Would I go back? With so many places to try throughout the Westchester area, I probably wouldn’t, but it was basically a solid neighborhood Mexican joint.