Otto's Tacos

Since we were food crawling through the East Village, we decided to make our last World Cup stop of the night at Otto's Tacos, part of the wave of excellent new taquerias in the city. We've been to Otto's before, but of course, have never blogged about it before (since that seems to be more common than actually recording our memories on time).

We were starting to get full after indulging in waffles and currywurst, so we just got 2 tacos ($3 each) and a side of chips and guacamole ($3.75).

The chips tasted like they were fried in-house and not pre-made, which gave them a nice crispness. The guacamole wasn't bad, but we liked the one A makes at home better. This one was mostly avocado with some cilantro and onion, but not much else. I think in the future we would skip this and get another taco instead, since we enjoyed the tacos more than the guacamole.

The two tacos we picked were the chicken and mushroom tacos. We had the chicken one before (although last time we got it the chicken was in bigger pieces, less marinated and more grilled). It was a little salty this time, probably because of how much marinade and sauce there was, but it was still good. The mushrooms in the taco were really buttery and rich (sort of like the way A thought the mushroom tacos I made at home would be back in May). The chicken taco had a green salsa and the mushroom one had red. I'm not sure how they choose which salsa goes with which taco, but the red one has a little bit more kick. Both were topped with plentiful amounts of onion and cilantro, which we like to see.

One of the other interesting things that Otto's serves is masa fries ($3). We didn't get these on this visit since we definitely didn't have the stomach space for that, but we got them another time. These weren't exactly what we were expecting. I thought they would be more like the chickpea fries we've had elsewhere - thick and soft - but they were thin and crispy. We do love the taste of masa though. These are quite interesting if you've never had them before and are worth a try.

We enjoyed our snack at Otto's Tacos and along with Taqueria Diana a block away, there are some great options for tacos down in the East Village. Mexican food on the West Coast may still be better, but at least you can't say anymore that there are no good tacos in Manhattan!

Otto's Tacos, 141 Second Ave (between St. Marks and E. 9th), East Village.