Dos Caminos Visited 5/12/2011 3 Forks

Dos Caminos 475 W Broadway, New York, NY 10013

Years ago when Dos Caminos first burst on to the scene, it was one of the hottest places to be.  A few co-workers and I had gone and I had remembered that I didn't love it.  It's tagged as a mexican restaurant but really the food was much more high-brow than you local burrito place.  After that experience, I just never bothered going back again. 


But I met up with Aarti and Will after their city hall nuptials at Dos Caminos because Aarti had wanted to get guacamole in a downtown location afterward.  The one nice thing about the SoHo location is that they have a large patio and on slightly cold days they have big heat lamps to keep you warm.  By the time I got there after work, they had already ordered guacamole and salsa for the table.  The guacamole was pretty tasty, very smooth and not bland, which is easy to do when making guacamole.  The chips were nice and thin and salted, not like the thick corn chips you sometimes get in mexican places.    At any good mexican restaurant, it's necessary to order a tasty alcoholic drink.  Since I'm not a huge fan of tequilla, I ordered the mojito instead.  I've had some pretty amazing mojitos before in my life and this was definitely not one of them.  It was totally flat and instead of muddling the lime and mint, they just dumped them into the glass.  Will then ordered the trio of ceviche which was tuna, lobster with mango and red snapper.  I love love ceviche in general and was excited to give this a try.  The tuna was very simple but delicious tasting. I was most excited for the lobster but it was way too sweet.  It was served with chopped up mangoes, which was fine, but it was the coconut chili sauce that was so sweet and masked any taste of lobster.  The red snapper was so finally chopped that I could barely taste it but it was the most classic form of ceviche of the three.  It was served with lime juice and tomatoes and onions, I just would have loved to have had larger pieces of fish. 

For my next drink, I opted for the red sangria ($9), which I was a bit skeptical about given how flat the mojito was, but it was surprisingly good.  It could have been a touch stronger but compared to my first drink, I would have at least gotten another glass of this.  For dinner, I got the Dos Enchiladas ($19) which came with a side of rice and beans.  The enchiladas came in two forms: one with a more smokey mole sauce and another more tangy green sauce.  Even though they were both made the same (chicken inside and drizzled with a little bit of cheese), I really liked the green sauce side a lot more.  The portion was surprisingly large and I was super full after forcing myself to finish the whole thing.  The rice and beans were good but nothing to write home about.  For dessert, we got the white and dark chocolate fondue and even though I'm not a huge fan of chocolate, I surprisingly really loved this dessert.  The white chocolate didn't taste like white chocolate at all, it almost tasted like vanilla pudding instead. They had a nice array of bananas, churros, strawberries, passion fruit marshmallows, and coconut puffs. The one annoying thing was that there are more chocolate than dipping things.  We ended up having almost half of the fondue leftover with no dipping things left.  While the food was not amazing, the service was.  Our waiter was great, just very friendly and easy going.  I can see why the patio and certain dishes are a big draw, but with a sub-par menu of cocktails, I left a bit wanting more.