The Secret Gorgon

We last wrote about Otto's Tacos back during our World Cup eating extravaganza, but we've been there a few times this month, enjoying taco treats that we've never had the opportunity to try before. It all started a few weeks ago when Otto's was having a celebration for the first anniversary of the restaurant. In honor of the special occasion, they were offering a limited edition fish taco. It's hard to find a good fish taco in NYC and we definitely were not going to pass up the chance to get one. Otto's nails the California taco vibe quite well and we hoped they would get the fish tacos right too. During that visit, we also got a couple of the shrimp tacos since they were the one standard taco we had never tried before.

The fish taco was only on the menu for about a week. On top of their usual homemade masa tortillas, they layered on fried cod, jalapeño tartar sauce, avocado crema, pico de gallo, and cabbage. The fish taco had a really nice flavor. The batter was tasty (I think we read online somewhere that it had paprika in it), the fish was soft and flaky, and the toppings were what we were expecting for a "real" fish taco. Although we still prefer the ones we got in LA, this was probably the best fish taco we've found so far within the boundaries of NYC.

The shrimp taco was a complete revelation and we were puzzled as to how we hadn't had it before, since it's now our favorite taco on the menu. The taco has the usual tortilla, onions, and cilantro, but also has griddled shrimp and serrano crema. The flavors of the spices used in the shrimp (which we couldn't identify by taste) were amazing. It was salty, it was peppery, and there was a little bit of zing. The shrimp were so good. Also, unlike some shrimp tacos elsewhere, there were a lot of little shrimp packed into this single taco. Totally worth the price. We were so happy we got this.

This past weekend, we went off on a food crawl downtown for my birthday and one of the stops on our original plan had been for a Thanksgiving croissant from Milk Bar. But a line down the street was not how we wanted to spend our afternoon, so we dropped that and I immediately had a replacement in mind - Otto's Tacos. It was around 4 pm on a cold day, so we figured that they should be a little emptier and maybe we could finally get the off-menu (secret, but nowadays not as secret) Gorgon taco! (It takes special work so they only really make it when they're not busy.)

I can't really adequately describe this taco, which is seriously gigantic (explains the very reasonable $8 price tag for such a gut bomb) and incredibly delicious, so I'll quote from Grub Street (which I believe is where I first heard about the Gorgon so many months ago). The Gorgon is:

"one supersize fresh-masa tortilla smooshed to order on a contraption that looks like something a dry cleaner would use to press pants, then deep-fried into a delicately chewy-flaky, almost croissantlike texture; a heaping helping of zingy carne asada fresh off the griddle; a gob of guacamole; a drizzle of serrano-chile crema; and a sprinkle of chopped onion and cilantro."

I would modify that to make it 2 small ice cream scoop-sized balls of guacamole and a heaping drizzle of crema, and to note that there is also red salsa (the sauce that usually comes with the carne asada), but otherwise that pretty much described what we got. It was completely amazing. (I try not to throw the superlatives around but we've had some really great stuff at Otto's this month, so it's hard not to do it!)

The Gorgon has been compared to the San Antonio puffy taco, but we've never been to San Antonio to try that, so we can't compare. For me, the closest thing I've probably had is an Indian fry bread taco (which was so good). After this, we're thinking we might need to get down to San Antonio, sooner rather than later, for some Tex-Mex. The Gorgon was so good that we kept talking about it for a good part of our walk to our next stop. Maybe we need to always go to Otto's during the off hours!