NEW YORK MAGAZINE FEATURE ON MOLE

Since 1992, Taco Taco has been sating Yorkville’s appetite for inexpensive Mexican fare, and after fifteen years, owners Nick Cervera and Lupe Elizalde expanded to the Lower East Side with an eccentrically accented outpost called Móle. But the complex Mexican sauce isn’t Móle’s raison d’être: Cervera just likes how it makes an apt melting-pot metaphor for New York City. His redesign of the former Win 49 space features exposed brick, Mexican Talavera tile, and a snug 25 seats, and Elizalde’s menu conforms to the one uptown, which covers familiar taquito-to-torta territory. More-ambitious specials include crepas con huitlacoche, mixiote (parchment-baked lamb shank), and the Yucatán specialty cochinita pibil (chile-marinated shredded pork, wrapped and baked in banana leaves). — Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld