Cafe de la Esquina Visited 8/17/2011 3 Forks

Cafe de la Esquina 225 Wythe Ave., (between 4th St & 3rd St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

If Cafe de la Esquina looks familiar, that's because it used to be Relish Diner.  But now instead of a cute 50's style diner, this place has been taken over by the uber trendy restaurant La Esquina, which has a sister restaurant in Soho (one of the first kind of speakeasy/hidden restaurants in NYC).  Despite still keeping the diner vibe and feel, they've managed to make it feel like a club too.  Inside, it's dark and LOUD and the back room is like some weird secret den area.  But overall, I did enjoy the food and who knew that one of the better burgers to be had in Williamsburg could be found in a Mexican restaurant?

We were seated at the counter and I immediately noticed that this wasn't your typical Mexican restaurant.  Now to be fair, I have been to the original La Esquina on Kenmare Street and remembered it being super trendy (I mean you have to go through a secret door and through a kitchen to get to the actual restaurant) and fancy, but I did remember the food being really good, so I was optimistic that the food would be good here.  While the menu did seem to be a bit more limiting than I recall,  Dan and I did manage to find plenty of things to order.  Dan's first thought was that the prices were too high and at first I didn't agree, but after getting the final bill and looking back, I have to agree with him.  We ordered the crab tostadas ($12) to start, and I had the mole enchiladas ($17) and Dan had a burger ($14) - seriously, he ordered a burger with fries here.  But it turned out to be a really great burger...more on that in a bit.  The crab tostadas had a pile of fresh crab meat mixed in with some hot sauce on top of what was essentially a tortilla chip.  While the taste was great and they didn't fill the crab with any filler, $12 for 3 small chips with some topping seems to be bit extreme.  Next came our main entrees and I will say that my dish was HUGE and I ended up turning it into 2 meals.  The mole sauce was nice and smokey and rice and beans were nicely seasoned with a nice salty taste to it.  I really only managed to have about 3-4 bites before I was just too full to continue.  Meanwhile Dan's burger was actually pretty damn good.  It was a hearty size and came on a soft brioche bun and topped with jalapeno and slices of fresh avocado.  I had several bites of it and thought that the meat was spot on but what I really liked were the fries.  They were perfectly crispy and firm and had the right amount of salt and light herb seasoning on it. Even though we finished the burger, I had to ask them to pack the fries home because they were so addictive.
The service was pretty great: our waitress was very knowledgeable and friendly and even when she wasn't around there were always people around to bring us our food, take our plates away, bring us more drinks and even took our credit card.  So it was a nice change from many restaurants where you have to flag your specific waitress down for everything, here everyone seemed to do a little bit of everything.  Given that I liked the food and such, the reason I'm not giving it a higher rating is because when I got the bill, it was $70 (without tip), which seems like a lot of money for what was essentially an appetizer, burger, enchiladas, and a few beers.  When did eating out always seem to cost at least $30-$40 per person without doing anything fancy?  Plus the atmosphere was a bit too trendy for me, but I'm definitely glad to have tried it.