Sunday, March 11, 2012

Centro Latin Kitchen & Refreshment Palace: Very Convincing...

The fancy names for their dishes created from hard-to-pronounce foods that are sometimes in Spanish and sometimes in English and the fact that they call themselves a "refreshment palace" (what does that mean, exactly? Who rules in a refreshment palace? King Mojito?) are among the various reasons that Centro seems a lot better than it actually is. The second I walked into this west Pearl Street restaurant, I felt a snooty, hipster-esque vibe resonating throughout it's modern Latin orange (just watch that be a new paint color name) walls. The entire place seems to have an attitude which makes you feel like you should be dining alongside political activists, film makers with thick-rimmed glasses or someone like Andy Warhol. I am not sure if any of this makes sense- eat there, and it will.

Now, they always say that confidence has perks- the fact that Centro is very sure of itself almost makes the food taste better than it really is. For example, instead of calling a slighyly modified tortilla soup "tortilla soup", they call it Sopa Azteca and then do that thing that upscale restaurants do where instead of giving a full description of the food they just list the fanciest sounding ingredients. Basically, the tortilla soup is showing its confidence by saying: "tortilla soup?? Heck no, I'm SOPA AZTECA baby!" and therefore convincing us that it is cooler than it is. That is a soup with swagger. It was actually very good- probably the best part of the meal. For our entree, my friend and I split the el hombre burrito with chorizo, wild mushrooms, and shrimp smothered in pork green chile. It was good, but once again, when what is basically a chorizo burrito calls itself something like that, it really convinces you that it is going to be the best thing ever created. Though it was good, I am not ready to devote any shrines to it.

I guess that fact that they are a "refreshment palace" as well as a Latin kitchen means that they basically rule at making drinks (because if they don't, they get downgraded to a refreshment shack. And no one wants that). Our very sweet waitress made me a tasty pomegranate mojito, and it was one of the best drinks that has ever graced my mouth with its presence. The service was a little slow, but it was seemingly the hot spot of the universe when we got there and our waitress was a regular Mary Poppins attitude-wise. She did this thing that I really liked where when she talked to us she would get down to our level phsically and look us in the eye like she truly cared. She got a good tip.

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