The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Well, E & I figured it was time to hand out a review of something new, so we looked down the list of recent restaurant openings for one that struck our eye. Matilda was the one this time. It’s located down in alphabet city, and is an intriguing sounding blend of Tuscan and Mexican cuisine.

The restaurant is quite small, but nicely designed. Obviously a lot of thought went into the space, and the end result is something that feels trendy but comfortable – a neighborhood restaurant doing a nice job.

The menu is interesting, and very affordable, with hardly anything topping $20, and most dishes well under. The wine list is the same, with a largely Tuscan selection, most of which are under $50. There are some Mexican wines as well, but on this trip we stuck to Tuscany and had a fairly good bottle of wine for $35.

But the food is really the question isn’t it? And what does Tuscan/Mexican fusion really mean? In this case, we had a soft taco appetizer (3 soft tacos) that had steak Florentine with a peccorino cheese and guacamole instead of the standard carne asada. The result was somewhat mixed. The cheese was an interesting addition, but I found the steak preparation to be less appealing, a little too bland to stand out amongst the other strong flavors in the taco. The corn tortillas were some of the best I’ve had, managing to have a texture almost more like a flower tortilla while retaining all the flavor of a corn one. Next time I’d try one of the other two fillings offered with the tacos (sadly, even though you get 3 tacos, they all have to have the same filling…an unfortunate flaw).

Our second somewhat fusion appetizer was burrata with fire roasted cherry tomatoes. For those of you who don’t know, burrata is the cheese of the gods. It’s mozzarella on crack, a ball of mozzarella stuffed with mozzarella that has a ricotta like consistency. It’s slowly making it’s way onto more and more menu’s in NY, and when I see it it’s a mandatory order. The plate that came was a gigantic ball of burrata, served a bit too cold, but to counter that was the heaping pile of fire roasted tomatoes which helped to warm up the burrata in your mouth. It was an interesting combination, as burrata is more often served wtih heirloom tomatoes and olive oil or proscuitto. I don’t think it was entirely successful as the acidity of the tomatoes was a bit much – but with a little tweaking I think it could be a resoundingly successful dish. The combination of hot and cold in the mouth, which allows the burrata flavor to come through at the end of a bite is quite appealingly interesting.

For a main course, we split the chorizo sandwich, and a side of spicy pickled vegetables. The sandwich looked burnt and small, but once bitten into, it turned into the definitive winner of the night. Here they hit in the perfect combination of spicy and sweet, with the hot chorizo complimented perfectly by a sweet marmalade, and the olive oil the bread was soaked in kept it from being too crispy and mouth shredding while still retaining its crunch.

The side of pickled vegetables were a little less of a hit with me. They’re well done, and come with some tortilla chips that seem like an odd thing with a plate of vegetables, but they do help to cut the (extreme) heat of them. I think that as an accompanyment to one of their regular entrees they would have been a nice spicy addition, but with our already hot sandwich, it was a heat overload.

For dessert we tried some of their homemade ice cream. I had the Mexican chocolate with (shockingly) jalepenos. The flavor was intense and appealing, with incredibly rich chocolate balanced nicely by the intense heat of the jalepenos. Where it fell apart for me was in the texture, but that’s a personal issue. I like ice cream that’s smooth and creamy, and this was a very mealy ice cream, somewhat like most coconut ice cream’s are like, and for me that’s enough to make it something I wouldn’t order again. But if you like that texture, the flavors were great.

Overall, I’d have to say that this is a flawed restaurant with a lot of potential to become something really good. When firing on all cylinders, it shows greatness, and the other dishes hint at it. But then again, dinner for two with a bottle of decent wine was under $100, quite a feat for Manhattan. I’m looking forward to giving Matilda another look in a few months to see if the kitchen figures it all out.

B-