Fonda — Restaurant in New York

To say that Fonda is amazing doesn't even give it justice. This is definitely one of my favorite restaurants in the city. I've been here a couple of times so far and each experience has been a wonderful treat. It's refined and upper-scale Mexican dining at its finest. The brick-lined space is pretty cozy and intimate but they have a small backyard open in the spring and summer.

This past weekend I happened to have an amazon voucher that I long forgot about and invited my friend to partake in the culinary delight. We ordered for an appetizer the flautas de pollo. Crunchy on the outside, stuffed with chicken and covered with salsa verde, pasilla de oxaca salsa, queso fresco and crema. A mind meld of flavors both tangy, savory and sweet. I love queso fresco. For our entrees we ordered a dish of Enchiladas Suizas, which I've sampled before. They are delicious! You get three enchiladas stuffed with chicken, creamy tomatillo sauce, and Chihuahua and Oxaca cheeses. I decided to be adventurous and try something I've never ordered here before and something of which I noticed was a fairly new addition to the menu: Carne Guisada Con Rajas. Or in English Beef Brisket. This brisket was falling apart it was so moist and succulent, sitting in its dripping juices of a mushroom gravy with roasted lime pickled poblano strips freckled on top. So delicious that when we were done with our entrees and sopping up their beans and rice, which the beans are great and have a hint of mole and a thick paste-like texture, my friend across the table asks: "Can I put my beans in your sauce?!"

For desert we topped it off with their tres leches cake. I've never tried their deserts here before because usually we're always tempted to get more than one appetizer. But the desert was top notch. A medium sized mound of fluffy cake, sitting in a bed of Chantilly cream with fresh berries. If this is that good, I'm tempted to try the Morenitas chocolate brownie next time I'm in. YUM.

Cocktails here are STRONG. You definitely get what you pay for out of your Margaritas. All of which have very unique flavors. They also have a wonderful happy hour when their drinks and select appetizers are discounted. Though, their happy hour ends very early Tues-Thurs at 7pm and on Weekends at 6pm. Race home from work or fake a doctor's appointment. It's that good. I would recommend for other food dishes to definitely try the Pork Adobo and Carne Asada. The Guacamole is fantastic and you can adjust it if you want it mild, medium or spicy. They also have a fantastic brunch menu and I recommend actually trying their burger. It sounds crazy. But the medley of sauces and salsas on it is pretty outstanding. Also, get reservations if you're doing dinner here because you can be waiting over an hour easily...

First time at Fonda's. Our server was Joffre. My wife and I saw the Google reviews and figured let's give them a try. We have done over 10 Mexican restaurants in the last 2 years throughout New York City since this is her favorite type of food. For appetizers we ordered the chips and guac which tasted good but the portion was a severe disappointment. As the pictures will show the guacamole bowl was only 3/4 of an inch filled as you can see by the residual marks.

We ordered tacos. My wife and I had the steak tacos and our son had the fish tacos. Tacos were good. We all got ginger ale with a glass of ice and as you can see from one of those pictures the ice cup had a human hair in it which matched our waiters hair to the t, as none of us at the table had hair similar to this strand.

After calling him (Joffre) over and pointing to the hair in the cup and saying it to him in Spanish there is a hair(2 inches) in my cup to not draw the attention of other patrons. Telling him "pelo" and pointing to it because he acted like he couldn't see it until I took out my phone and took a picture and showed him on zoom. Instead of being cordial and apologetic he took the glass and said I'll replace it. No apology, no sorry for the disgusting long long hair in your cup. He came back with a new cup of ice but this second cup of ice also had debris in it. At that point I just decided to share my glass of ice and drinks with my wife and leave the filthy cup at the table as a bell weather.

We paid and still tipped the waiter for his poor actions and service. We will not be back as this was a...

I had never been to Fonda and went for valentines because they had a reasonable price prix fixe. I'll start with the bad. We had to wait around 30 minutes in the freezing cold after arriving at our reserved time, the hostess mumbled our name so quietly if we hadn't been right behind her we wouldn't have heard and I'm wondering if that was her intention, tables seated after us were served guac and drinks before us even though we ordered before them, and they ran out of one of the desserts which I had been excited for. Otherwise the experience was pretty good.

The guacamole was good and you could get it with chips or tortillas which worked out well because my girlfriend and I prefer different things. The sopa de tortilla was terrible for me, borderline inedible. It tasted like a bowl of salty chicken gravy. The flautas were amazing, fresh and crispy and highly recommended. The pollo norteno was good as well, well seasoned and the cured red onions gave it a nice contrast. My girlfriend got the carne asada which was cooked well and not too mushroomy, the sauce was rich and creamy and we both enjoyed it. For dessert I we had the tres leches and some apple empanadas. The tres leches was very good though I didn't enjoy the empanadas. I had a hibiscus margarita with my meal, I'm not a huge tequila fan and it was ridiculously strong but I could see it being enjoyable.

Even with the negatives I would definitely return to Fonda, I hope I can update my review to 4...