Tacombi — Restaurant in New York

2 1/2 stars

I recently started working in the area, and Tacombi caught my eye pretty quickly. It has a pretty noticeable exterior that sets it apart from some of the generic Financial District establishments (from my meanderings, the restaurants seem to either be super flashy or not in the slightest; no middle ground), and around lunchtime the giant doors are opened up so you can see inside and ogle the little cocktail bar. They also have one of those outdoor popup dining situations right off the sidewalk that have become kind of a vestige of COVID restaurant life. It's an interesting decor - there's kind of a tiki bar, Mexican cantina vibe, and oodles and oodles of tile that reminds me (not in a bad way) of a high school locker room, minus the sweat and teen angst.

I stopped by for a quick lunch yesterday around 1:30pm. It was decently crowded but the hostess immediately seated me at the small bar near the front (in my experience, restaurants seem to be super on their toes for sit-down customers by themselves, I suspect because those customers don't have anyone in their dining party to distract them from a potential wait time). The menu/ordering process is unique in that you have to take a golf pencil, mark what you want and hand it to the waitress to forward over to the kitchen. I'd done a little prep work beforehand and opted for the roasted pork burrito, which showed up within about 10 minutes.

Disclaimer - this was LITERALLY only the second burrito I've ever had. Absolutely take my comments with a grain of salt. My first burrito was an excellent carne asada masterpiece from the Tacoria in Hoboken, which I thought was delicious, and I intend to use it as my gold standard comp going forward. This was definitely not as good. I think you can see from the accompanying picture that the flour tortilla is kind of limp and greasy. It should have been a little crispier, and it wasn't rolled evenly in the sense that a corner of the burrito had extra rolls of tortilla squeezed in where someone realized belatedly that they had some tortilla left over. Notwithstanding that I'm not a burrito expert, I would think the mark of a high-quality burrito is the ability to evenly distribute the ingredients (similar to a sushi roll), but there were mouthfuls that were solely pork or solely lettuce. And in terms of personal palate preference, I definitely would have liked having beans in there versus the lettuce. It would have been helpful to have a breakdown of the ingredients on the menu for context so I could have made more of an informed decision in that regard.

This is actually a pretty rare instance where I'd come back at least to the bar to try one of their cocktails. The service was EXCELLENT from beginning to end. My order was taken within a minute of using the golf pencil, the food came out quickly, someone in management stopped by to check in, and when I needed the check, it was provided within about 20 seconds. It would have honestly been impossible for them to improve on that point, which is a great, intangible quality. I'm willing to chalk up a lot of the food issues here to irreconcilable differences (Mexican isn't one of my top genres). If and when I get back here for a night cap, I'd love to be able to update this review to something...

Highly recommend Tacombi for their food, ambiance, service, and mission.  They have simple, reasonably priced, but delicious and authentically Mexican tacos.  We shy away from most Mexican places in NYC as we find most to be more the American or fast food version of Mexican cuisine, but Tacombi is a rare exception.  The menu is simple, a few entradas, tacos and tostadas, quesadillas, and burritas.  They have cocktails, beer, and Mexican sodas as well.  The standouts are the corn esquites, tacos al pastor (maybe the best ever– with perfectly cooked meat and a chunk of pineapple), pollo yucatecho, and the Norteña quesadillas.  The decor is campy but not kitsch, with the outdoor street pandemic-era seating made to resemble their original combi bus.  The menu and marketing are tongue-in-cheek versions of the ridiculous 1970s exotic travel agency ads; ordering is done by marking your desired items on a paper with pencils 'from' random Mexican hotels.  The service is fast and friendly with takeout/delivery available and a points/loyalty reward program.  They make their own tortillas and have a general mission to spread Mexican hospitality, end food insecurity, and hire and train people for careers, not just jobs. ...

I loathe writing negative reviews, but $6.98 before tax for 1 beer battered fish taco had my 50% Mexican blood in a crippling depression. Wasn't even a big taco either, like a normal sized taco.

My men's league basketball team, The Amplitude Quaaludes, came in here riding an all time high dopamine run as we just improved to 2-0 after THRASHING the "Sun Blocks." I played the best game of my life as well, felt like I was Air Bud out there tbh.

I thought nothing could take this feeling of pure exaltation away, but this $7 taco did the trick.

I don't know, I'm not mad I'm just disappointed. I get it's NYC and that rental payments and input costs are only rising, but $6.98 before tax for a taco just goes against the spirit of tacos as a whole.

I will be fair, the rice and beans was priced NYC fair at $4.78 for a delicious portion of spanish rice and black beans.

Even as I am wrapping this review up, I am debating posting it because I feel bad. Enough people write negative reviews without ever writing good ones. But that taco pricing felt like Leon Edwards kicking me in the head.

RIP AIR BUD. GONE TOO SOON. DON'T WORRY I WON'T LET THEM FORGET!

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