El Paso Taqueria, Manhattan, NYC

One big advantage about USA when compared to Singapore, is the availability of authentic Mexican food at a reasonable price. Although NYC is lagging slightly behind the whole Mexican food scene when compared to the West-coast counterparts, there's still some decent Mexican fare to be found in this city.

I started off with the recommended appetizer of ceviche camaron which is basically a Mexican shrimp salad. Fresh chunky bits of shrimp were coarsely diced and mixed together with some advocado, raw onions and a sour vinegarette of lemon juice and vinegar. Whilst this was tart enough to whet my appetite and the shrimp chunks were quite decent, I felt that it wasn't really worth the price of 9.50.

The tacos are what this place is really about. The al pastor is roasted marinated pork served with onions and pineapple bits. The smokey aroma of the roasted pork blended nicely with the sweet onions and pineapple.

A simple and straight-forward bistec taco featuring a generous amount of chargrilled beef strips. The simplicity of flavor here is what makes it excel.

I was told the taco carnitas had a little kick in it due to the use of spices, so I had to order it. This was tasty, definitely way below my threshold of chili-spiciness but the amount of grease in this made it quite delectable indeed.

All the tacos come with a generous amount of onions, cilantro and guacamole but they serve quite a few condiments on the side which were pretty good. The radish in particular was very fresh.

Dessert of the day was this slice of homemade cake. Well, it was really nothing to shout about and definitely didn't justify the 5.50 price-tag.

The meal was accompanied by a sweet and tangy pina colada which tasted pretty refreshing since fresh pineapple was used.

With two locations and a third one coming up pretty soon, El Paso Taqueria is a pretty good place to go for your Mexican fix but I'll just stick to the tacos this time which start from as low as 2.25.

D