What's Happening at Empellon

Empellón's approach to cuisine is informed by authenticity but not limited by it. We have three restaurants in New York, Empellón Taqueria, Empellón Al Pastor, and Empellón Cocina.

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Celebrate Cinco de Mayo at Empellón

On Sunday May 3rd, Empellón Taqueria hosts a special Cinco De Mayo Brunch Party. 

Enjoy unlimited House Margaritas, Beer, and House Wine alongside a two course menu featuring Guacamole and your choice of brunch dishes including Chilaquiles, Churro French Toast with Smoked Maple Syrup, and Fish Tempura Tacos.

There are three seatings for this event. 12:00pm: Drink package and reservation to conclude at 1:30pm $45.00 per person 1:30pm: Drink package and reservation to conclude at 3:30pm $55.00 per person 3:30pm: Drink package and reservation to conclude at 5:30pm $55.00 per person

To secure your table for brunch, please fill out the web form or call 212-367-0999. ___________________________________________________________________

On Tuesday May 5th, celebrate the holiday with us at any of our three locations.

From 3:00PM until 6:00PM, Empellón Taqueria presents an extended Hora Del Amigo happy hour featuring $3 Mexicali cans, Buy-One-Get-One House Margaritas, and a la carte tacos by the piece. ...

A special prix fixe dinner menu will be featured at Empellón Cocina for $55.00. The meal will include unlimited House Margaritas, Beer, and House Wine. Reservations are recommended and accepted via web form or by phone [phone]). ...

Beginning at noon, Empellón Al Pastor offers drink specials at the bar until closing.

We hope you’ll join us for one of these upcoming special events.

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NYC Restaurant Week with Empellón

Empellón Cocina and Empellón Taqueria are pleased to be part of NYC Restaurant Week, running from February 16 through March 6. We will be offering three course prix fixe menus at both locations.

Empellón Cocina Dinner 

Empellón Taqueria Lunch

Empellón Taqueria Dinner

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Super Bowl Catering Now Available

Available for pickup on February 1 at Empellón Al Pastor, our Super Bowl Game Day package ($195 plus tax) serves 6-8 people and includes the following: Tacos (choose 3 types) Al Pastor (Spit Roasted Pork, Pineapple) | Beef, Caramelized Onions | Chicken, Chipotle | Potatoes, Red Chorizo | Nopales, Arbol Chile, Queso Fresco* | Oyster Mushrooms a la Mexicana* | Red Chile Pork | Tripe, Beef Tongue, Bacon Sides (all included) Drunken Black Beans, Al Pastor Scraps | White Beans, Chilmole* Guacamole* | Tortilla Chips* | Three Salsas* *vegetarian Please email [email protected] to place your order. Please include your name, phone number and desired February 1 pick-up time between 12:00PM and 4:00PM. All orders must be received by January 30th.

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Super Bowl Party at Empellón Taqueria

On Super Bowl Sunday (February 1) at Empellón Taqueria, we're offering a $55 prix fixe menu (excluding tax and gratuity) with Chips and Salsa, Guacamole, Queso Fundido, and two Tacos of your choice, along with Unlimited Beer and House Wine during the game.

For this one night only, we'll be offering our Chicken Wing tacos with Salsa Macha and Peanuts.

Please email [email protected] to secure your table.

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Inside Empellón Cocina: Deviled Egg Filling

When going out to eat Mexican food, Americans are often driven by a craving for a crunchy chip and a margarita. That fundamental pleasure principle drives the opening section of our a la carte menu dedicated to things that go well with a masa crisp, be they direct translations or simple adaptations. A dish unrelated to Mexican cooking, our deviled egg filling deliberately eschews the egg whites, instead letting the masa crisp serve as the vehicle for spicy creamy yolk. The smokiness of paprika is substituted with habanero chiles, which are smoked and dehydrated at low temperature to retain their bright floral nature, then sprinkled over the yolk. Lastly, we add trout roe, a personal favorite topping for deviled eggs.

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Some lovely artwork accompanies this Condé Nast Traveler piece on the seven must-try moles of Oaxaca.

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3 Ways To Celebrate New Year's Eve with Empellón

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Inside Empellón Al Pastor: Spicy Pickled Cabbage

La Teca is one of the coolest restaurants in Oaxaca if not the world, essentially because it’s not at all a typical restaurant. Upon entering, you walk through an actual person’s living room--replete with a coffee table and television--to a courtyard adorned with lime trees, hoja santa plants, hummingbirds. Here, you sit at a table with a bottle of mezcal and enjoy awesome home cooked meals from the Isthmus. It is famous for garnachas, a type of antojito topped with chilito, a spicy pickled cabbage. The closest thing we have to a salad at Empellón Al Pastor, this side dish utilizes that Oaxacan preparation. In a way, ours resembles a green papaya salad in that it offers vinegary, spicy gratification.

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Inside Empellón Cocina: Nantucket Bay Scallops with Lime Curd and Butternut Squash

Applying flavors and techniques from one type of cooking to another interests and excites us. This composed ceviche dish allows us to deploy acid and butter in an unusual way by adapting a proven pastry-making method commonly used for lemon tart or lemon pie filling. Deliberately omitting sugar in its preparation, lime curd is snaked across the plate to act as a solid condiment for Nantucket Bay scallops. Keeping with this mollusk's seasonality, we add slivers of raw butternut squash and squash puree with a pinch of orange blossom.

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New Year's Eve 6 Course Dinners at Empellón

Join us on Wednesday, December 31 at Empellón Taqueria and Empellón Cocina for a six course dinner with unlimited beer, margaritas, and house wine.

Guacamole, Salsa De Arbol, Salsa Verde Wild Striped Bass Ceviche, Jicama, Mole Verde Oil Kabocha Squash, Mole Poblano, Pepitas Lobster Fundido, Tomate Frito, Kol Roasted Chicken Taco, Chilmole Gravy, Smoked Parsnip Beef Shortrib, Smoked Bone Marrow, Papalo Chef's Choice of Dessert

(includes unlimited beer, margaritas, and house wine)

Reservations

Deviled Egg, Trout Roe, Sal de Gusanos, Masa Crisp Poached Oyster, Caramelized Salsify, Oyster Leaf Verde Cauliflower Barbacoa Pommes Aligot Fundido, Pickled Potatoes, Chayote Poached Monkfish, Sea Urchin Salsa, Cabbage Beef Shortrib, Parsley Root, Hoja Santa Chef's Choice of Dessert

(includes unlimited beer, margaritas, and house wine)

Reservations

Select seatings are available at both locations.

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Inside Empellón Al Pastor: Braised Kale, Green Chorizo

The capital of Mexico State, Toluca also happens to be the country’s chorizo capital. There, you’ll generally find two varieties: red and green. Though sometimes suspiciously viridescent from food coloring, the latter of these employs fresh green poblano and serano chiles as well as herbs like cilantro, oregano, and parsley. This makes for a lighter, more vegetal cousin to red chorizo. While we had never seen green chorizo braised with kale before, the idea of a very sturdy green stewed with a pork product appealed to us, especially in the broad context of American Southern cooking.

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Inside Empellón Al Pastor: Tacos Al Pastor

Translating to “the style of the shepherd,” the term al pastor is meant to describe a particular way of cooking. Lebanese immigrants brought lamb shawarma to Mexico, which locals subsequently adopted as a technique for pork. Roasting on an upright rotating spit is an incredibly interesting method, a form of cooking as architecture. In a pan, meat can be seared effectively with some salt and pepper, but a slowly spinning trompo that weighs between 75 and 100 pounds poses unique challenges. When building any structure, the base is of vital importance. A trompo’s base needs to serve as the foundation for an ever-widening tower of pork shoulder, with all layers evenly rubbed with adobo and then cooked well. Served with pineapple, salsas, and a garnish of cilantro and onion, the construction is worth the work.

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Currently Drinking: El Pelotón De La Muerte

Produced in Tlacolula De Matamoros in Oaxaca, this espadín-based mezcal from Mezcales De Leyenda takes its fearsome name from the insurgency of the Mexican Revolution. A versatile mixer for cocktailing, it works well with a variety of ingredients without sacrificing any of its inherent strength, no doubt bolstered by a double copper distillation process.

At Empellón Cocina, we use El Pelotón De La Muerte in our Winter margarita. While at our other restaurants our seasonal cocktails utilize available fruit, this drink aims to invoke a more of a holiday mood. Employing canela salt and nut liqueurs like black walnut bitters, the wintry play on a margarita is finished with atomized bourbon sprayed over the top. The comforting result looks, feels, and smells like something we want to have around during these colder months.

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New To Empellón Taqueria: Mariscos

Two new additions to our mariscos menu:

Diver Scallop, Saffron Cucumber, Passionfruit Habanero Salsa

Wild Striped Bass, Jicama, Mole Verde Oil

Available during lunch or dinner at Empellón Taqueria.

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Inside Empellón Al Pastor: Oyster Mushrooms, a la Mexicana

When a menu item is described as a la Mexicana, that term reliably refers to a cooked down preparation of tomato, onion, serrano chile, and cilantro. The red, white, and green ingredients match the colors match the colors of the Mexican flag, hence the name. We find oyster mushrooms are well-suited to this method more so than button or portobello varieties. Their texture stays intact and remains meaty despite a long aggressive braising, making them optimal for tacos de guisados.

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Inside Empellón Al Pastor: Tripe, Beef Tongue, Bacon

Throughout Mexico City, offal is fairly common and prevalent at taquerias that offer tacos de guisados. We wanted to have at least one such offering on our menu, ideally a complex mixture of different animal parts. Generally speaking, organ meats benefit from a long slow simmer, so here we stew down tripe, beef tongue, and bacon with chorizo, tomato, jalapeño, onion, and garlic. In a beef-chicken-pork-vegetable society, this item will never be our best seller, but it’s nonetheless a personal favorite--apart from the taco al pastor, of course. 

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Currently Drinking: Siete Leguas Reposado

Named for Pancho Villa’s horse, Siete Leguas has a long established history with tequila, with the distinction of being the original distillers of Patrón. (In fact, the original Patrón bottle bears an uncanny resemblance to theirs.) Aged eight months in American oak, their reposado comes from Highland agave milled using a large stone wheel called a tahona, a traditional process used by only a very small number of producers presently. Conjuring clay and canela, the agave is nice on the nose, with hints of vanilla. A particularly smooth offering with an even finish, it tastes of mild oak and fresh pineapple. Served with house-made sangrita at all three of our restaurants, this versatile tequila pairs well with dishes that utilizes chiles or bright citrus.