Mama Mexico, Broadway @ 101st Street

Mama Mexico has fun drinks, live music (a traveling guitar player with a fabulous voice who croons Happy Birthday in English and Spanish, as well as more traditional and modern songs), decent, higher end Mexican food, and lots of noise -- depending on where you're seated.  It so happened that a large party of men were in one room, we were seated in the glassed in "green house" decorated with colorful hanging lanterns and baskets of twining ivy.

Two at our table ordered festive margaritas that looked like a lava lamp as the layers of blue, pink, and yellow bled into each other.  There is also a full complement of Mexican (and American) beer, as well as an extensive wine menu.

Hot tortilla chips with a fresh salsa -- full of tomatoes and cilantro -- are served before you order.  Then the drinks came.  We ordered a guacamole which was prepared at our table -- a whole avacado scooped out and mixed with chopped tomatoes, onions, and spices.  Two at our table ordered the Tacos al Carbon ($16) -- soft corn tortillas rolled with grilled skirt steak with refried beans and pico de gallo,  and served with black beans and rice, lettuce and guacamole.  One of us ordered the cheese enchiladas ($15).  And I ordered pollo con mole poblano ($16) -- two tender boneless chicken breasts smothered in a spicy, (not sweet) chocolate sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds.  (Since reading Like Water for Chocolate, I've always ordered chicken mole when it's available).

We might have ordered dessert, but it took fifteen minutes for our waiter to return, and by then we asked for the check.  It took another half hour before the charged statement was brought back for our signature.

Dinner for 4 with two margaritas and one beer came to $104 and change.

Rack & Soul, 109th just east of Broadway

Stacked to the right of the entrance behind the window (where else do you stack wood in NY?) is a quarter cord of split wood for Rack & Soul's wood-smoked barbecue.  And what barbecue it is!  We passed through the charming, wooden bar area with its half dozen tables to the back room -- a paneled extension with planked floors and a few tables and booths.  Photographs of old New York (circa 1900) grace the walls.  There's even a photo of our building just after it was built!  The restaurant was quiet on a Sunday night around 8 pm.  Usually, it's far more crowded.

Right after we sat down, plates with two hot, just-baked biscuits were set down before us.  We ordered two Abita beers ($6 each) brewed from Louisiana spring water, and fried crawfish tails with a creamy smooth pink sauce faintly tasting of lemon juice, ketchup, mayo, and cayenne pepper.  The crawfish, brought almost immediately from the kitchen, were covered in a deep-fried film of batter.  We also ordered the combination platter (choose two entrees from ribs, pulled pork, BBQ chicken wings or fried chicken, and choose two sides from broccoli, asparagus, collard greens, string beans, black-eyed peas, lima beans, baked beans, cole slaw, stewed okra, macaroni and cheese, candied yams, white rice, mashed potatoes, french fries, potato salad, or a belgian waffle).  I would have liked a taste of everything.  Alas, something to save for another day.

The wood-smoked ribs were tender, not fatty, and so thick, it seems we'd ordered pork-roast with a little bone. A sweet barbecue sauce covered only the outer surface, though you could squeeze on more sauce (piquant or sweet) from a plastic bottle on the table.  Or, you could add tabasco sauce, also on the table.  The fried chicken was what I remembered from my childhood -- when Maggie, who sometimes cleaned and sometimes cooked for us -- whipped up her version of fried chicken: A crunchy, dry crust of batter around tender, moist chicken.

The collard greens were over-cooked as they have to be, dark green (making us feel righteous about our healthy choice of a side dish), with a hint of vinegar and butter.   The finely chopped cole slaw in a creamy, celery seeded sauce was among the best cole slaws I've ever had.  Yay, vegetables!

And then dessert.  We had to try the pecan pie and the banana pudding layered over sliced bananas and vanilla wafers, as if it were a trifle.  Both were very good.  The pecan pie was loaded with chopped nuts in a fairly dry (for pecan pie) pudding redolent of brown sugar, molasses and butter.  The banana pudding melted the vanilla wafers, making me feel like a kid again who liked to dip her vanilla wafers in milk.

Our bill came to $60.59.