A Cult-Favorite Brooklyn Taqueria Heads to Manhattan

Occasionally, a restaurant comes along that rewrites the diets of New Yorkers, compelling them to try foods they might have previously ignored. It happened at Dhamaka, where goat testicles became a bestseller, and later at Lord’s, known for cheeks and gizzards. It also happened at Taqueria Ramirez: In 2021, the Greenpoint taqueria turned a thin strip of muscle meat into one of the city’s most talked-up tacos, then and now.

This spring, the taqueria’s owners, Giovanni Cervantes and Tania Apolinar, are trying it again. They’re opening a second restaurant — not in Brooklyn as one might expect, but in the East Village at 210 E. Third Street, near Avenue B. The specialty is carnitas.

These aren’t the oily, pulled pork-style carnitas you had last weekend at 3 a.m. These are real carnitas, the kind you previously had to travel to Queens, the Bronx, or this driveway in Bushwick to find. They’re chewy, not stringy, and full of flavor because they’re made with more parts of the pig than you can name.

The selection at the soon-to-open Carnitas Ramirez includes slow-simmered head, shoulder, ear, uterus, and stomach. “We want to expand the knowledge of all the different parts of the animal that you can eat,” Cervantes says. “If you’re from Mexico, you’re very used to that.”

Cervantes is from Mexico City, but his recipe comes from Michoacán, the southern Mexican state where carnitas are said to have originated. He learned to make carnitas from taqueros in the region. “It’s more about time and temperature than anything else,” he says.

Beyond tacos, the taqueria will have lonche de carnitas, a sandwich from northern Mexico, and quesadillas de sesos made with brain. “The taste is similar to the tripa,” Cervantes says, “which makes sense. They say the stomach is the second brain.”

Ahead of the opening, the owners will be serving their carnitas at various events. First up: a pop-up at the wine bar Sauced (47 Second Avenue, near East Third Street) on Monday, April 1.