• Cuisine: Mexican
• Vibe: Laid-back chic
• Occasion: Group dinner, communal dining, neighborhood bites
• Don't Miss: Tacos de suadero, enchiladas de mole, churros
• Price: Appetizers, $8; entrées, $14; desserts, $4.50
• Reservations: Accepted only for six or more
• Phone: (718) 782-8171
• Location: 372 Graham Ave., between Skillman Ave. and Conselyea St., Brooklyn

It's hard to find a good black mole sauce, but Garcia's is phenomenally flavorful. It's a 37-ingredient mole that requires its own chef and includes six types of chiles, Mexican chocolate, almonds and cinnamon. I highly recommend the enchiladas de mole - moist chicken bathing in smoky-sweet sauce, rolled up in a thick tortilla and crowned with crema fresca, avocado, onion and sesame seeds. There's also $7 tamale trio with shredded chicken and black mole wrapped in a corn husk.

There are a few hiccups on the menu. Skip the ceviches, both were ruined by a watery tomato salsa. The grilled whole snapper was dry and poorly matched with a lump of guacamole and a cold cactus salad. And all three salads arrived way overdressed.

There's a small but well-edited wine list and a great Michelada, a lime-spiked beer served in a spice-rimmed glass.

For dessert, I love the churros, which come with a rich chocolate and milky caramel dipping sauce. There's also homemade strawberry ice pops spiced with chile de arbol, and cinnamon-flavored horchata.

Mesa Coyoacan's been open only a month, and it's already crowded with repeat customers. We have tons of great ethnic food in New York. But to be honest, we could use a few more good Mexican restaurants like this one.

La Superior

295 Berry St., near S. Second St., Brooklyn, (718) 388-5988. Mon.-Thu. 12:30 p.m.-midnight, Fri.-Sun, 12:30 p.m. - 2 a.m.

Cuisine: Mexican street food
Vibe: Dingy taqueria
Occasion: Destination dining
Don't miss dish: Mushroom quesadillas, enchiladas suizas
Average price: Appetizers, $4; entries $10.
Reservations: No reservations, cash only, BYOB.

To say La Superior is understated is an understatement. "Do you think this is it?" a friend said nervously. We were standing outside a dingy storefront on an empty street in Williamsburg. "It must be," I answered cheerily. "I need a cocktail," she grumbled as she followed me through the door.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that the restaurant doesn't have a liquor license. The dining room at La Superior looks like a diner on its last legs. The table settings are disposable - red and blue plastic plates, flimsy plastic cups, and supermarket napkins in plastic napkin holders that might've been stolen from a Midwest Sunday dinner.

Our waiter Danny - who is also the bartender - handed us two menus. "This is the real one and that's a photocopy," he grumbled. "We had problems with the printer." Both were illegible, salsa-stained sheets of paper. The only words we could make out were guacamole, tacos and calle - in other words, street food. Luckily, that's all you need to know.

We started with the guacamole. What most restaurants serve has no more taste than green sour cream. But this is more like avocado ceviche - diced onions and tomatoes, cilantro, and Haas avocados from Michoacán, Mexico. It tasted unbelievably fresh, as if it had been made two seconds before it reached the table.

The tortilla chips are just as good. And the quesadilla might be the best five bucks you can spend on food. Especially the mushroom quesadilla crowned with a flurry of Oaxaca cheese and Mexican crema. I ordered the enchiladas suizas - so-called because the topping supposedly looks like the Swiss Alps. It really resembles gentle swells in a tomatillo sea and it tastes like the Mexican equivalent of béchamel sauce.

The pork taco isn't as simple as it sounds. It's actually pork confit accented with a hint of orange. The shrimp tacos are ablaze in a fiery chipotle sauce. I advise pairing either of these with the cactus tacos, which are filled coarse, cool pieces of nopal cactus topped with aged cheese. La Superior also serves an off-the-cob side of corn in a plastic cup - a savory parfait layered with Oaxaca cheese and homemade mayonnaise.

For now, bring your own tequila. Danny will mix it with agua de limo - made with boiled limes, skin and all - or a berry red juice made from prickly pear. This is sublime Mexican street food with the luxury of a roof and a scattering of small tables.

The General Greene

229 DeKalb Ave., near Clermont Ave., Brooklyn, (718) 222-1510.
5 p.m.-11 p.m., Thu., 5 p.m.-midnight, Fri-Sat., 5 p.m.-1 a.m., Closed Mond.
Cuisine: New American
Vibe: Lively neighborhood haunt
Occasion: Casual bite
Don't miss dish: Radishes with sea salt and anchovies, chocolate chip cookies.
Average price: Appetizers, $6; entrees, $10; dessert, $7.
Reservations: Accepted for six or more.

The General Greene in Fort Greene is nearly as budget-friendly as La Superior. But the food's not nearly as good. Never mind the crowd waiting to get in. They don't know what they're waiting for.

Dishes come out of the kitchen helter skelter, all at once - as if the servers had somewhere better to be. It's a small-plate menu that provides no structure for the meal. The appetizers could be entrees. The entrees could be hors d'oeuvres. Some food is well-prepared, like radishes with sea salt and chopped anchovies.

But some is downright dangerous. The red mullet is so bony it should've come with a warning label. The grilled shrimp are so overcooked they became one with their shells. Perhaps the best thing on the menu is the chocolate chip cookies, which have a surprisingly salty crunch. Order one as an appetizer.

A block north of Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg, old women sit in lawn chairs along the sidewalk, fanning themselves with the crossword puzzle. Kids play catch in the middle of the street. A cyclist stops to high-five a friend through the large open window of a restaurant.

It's a new spot, open only since December, but already it seems to belong to the old neighborhood. It's called Miranda. Inside, the tables are set with dishtowel napkins and grandmother china.

Most nights, the co-owner, Mauricio Miranda, greets you at the door. And if he's not there to greet you, you might want to come back another night. That's how much difference his presence makes. The other co-owner is Miranda's fiancée, Sasha Rodriguez, who is the chef. She and Miranda met at Verbena, a defunct Italian restaurant near Gramercy Park. He was a server and she was a line cook. Together, at Miranda, they make a perfect marriage of Mexican and Italian food.

It's interesting to see how naturally the ingredients of those two cuisines can be wedded. Instead of risotto, there's Mexican rice, as wonderfully glutinous but flavored with tomato and cumin.

These combinations completely transform familiar dishes. You order the garganelli, and out comes a dish that looks like baked ziti. It's every bit as fulfilling but a hundred times better. What makes the difference is tangy chunks of longaniza sausage.

Or take the arancini. You expect it to be made with ground veal or beef, but instead it's studded with spheres of chorizo and served over a garlicky tomato fonduta.

Eat a few of these dishes and you begin to realize how close the connection between Italian and Mexican cuisine really is. Sometimes, there's only one ingredient of separation.

The food here is neighborhood food, comfort food, every-night food - but with a twist. A perfect example is the chicken soup. It gets a spicy kick of habanero chili and a nudge of lime. The pork tenderloin feels almost pleasingly wintry, except for the mole verde sauce, which is really a bright taste of summer. A special of fluke, baked in parchment paper, is a delicate fillet balanced on a sticky mound of Mexican rice, julienned zucchini and a beet leaf that tastes unmistakably of the earth.

When Mauricio stops by the table, he is usually brimming with excitement. Sometimes, he's showing off a bottle from his interesting collection of wines, many from small or organic producers. (I liked the Torrontes 2006 and the Alentex rosé.)

Sometimes, he's proudly presenting his small mounds of hibiscus leaves - jamaica (ha-MIKE-uh) - from his grandmother's garden in southern Mexico. It appears in a drink called Kika - a blend of homemade jamaica syrup, port and prosecco that looks and tastes like a fizzy Kool-Aid cocktail.

73 Gansevoort St., near Washington St. (646) 810-7290
Hours: Dinner, Sun.-Thurs., 5:30-11 p.m., Fri. & Sat., 5:30-midnight
CUISINE  Regional Mexican
VIBE  Dimly lit, cavernous space
OCCASION  Festive group dinner, night out
DON'T-MISS DISH  Grilled shrimp & Yucatan pork achiote tamal.
PRICE  Appetizers, $7-$17; entrees, $13-$19; desserts, $7-$10.
RESERVATIONS  Recommended.

Baskets of tortilla chips and kitschy Mexican shrines might be the last thing you would expect from the Meatpacking District, especially from David Rabin and Will Regan, the pair responsible for such exclusive clubs as Double Seven and Lotus.

Here, no clipboard-wielding hostess or velvet rope stands between you and the entrance of Los Dados, the district's first Mexican eatery. Parties and clusters of strangers congregate over Margaritas along a communal table in a dimly lit dining room.

Regan and Rabin have enlisted chef Sue Torres to execute "Mexican home cooking." Having earned respect for her sharp regional cooking at Suenos and Rocking Horse Cafe, Torres delivers a comfort-food menu with an authentic selection of tacos, enchiladas, quesadillas and tamales.

But this is Meatpacking Mexican, overpriced plates in designer sizes.

Meatpacking inflation translates to an $8 guacamole appetizer - a meager portion that prompted my companion to order another. "We can't share this," she declared, though we were grateful for the complimentary tortilla chips - salty, addictively crunchy, still warm - as well as two peppy homemade salsas.

Mini-beef-tacos are anything but small on flavor. Soft tortillas are stuffed with smoky beef, finely capped off with queso fresco and mildly spiced pico de gallo. Coriander-crusted tuna tostadas arrive neatly layered with a feisty pineapple salsa and a cooling smear of guacamole.

Tilapia Veracruzana makes a commendable appearance: pan-seared and strewn with garlic, capers and green olives atop a white bean puree. On my first visit, the seafood of choice was skate, a dry and obstinate platform for such a heady mix of seasonings. Upon successive returns, Torres had smartly switched out the skate for a moist, rewarding tilapia.

She has a wicked way with tamales. The best was a Yucatan pork achiote tamal: ground corn laced with supple strands of pork and lush crema that comes wrapped in a banana leaf. Accompanied by grilled shrimp, heated with ancho chili sauce, the dish bites back practically on cue.

The menu hits as many low marks as it does high ones. Shrimp ceviche was overboiled in a thick muck that recalled canned tomato sauce. Bland halibut tacos were utterly forgettable; beef enchiladas encased dried-out shreds of beef; and chicken quesadillas were overwhelmed by chipotle and under-serviced by gooey cheese.

For dessert, the only way to go out is the churros, authentic, crispy doughnuts in a puddle of chili-spiked chocolate sauce. Los Dados translates literally as "the dice." Which is convenient, considering the uneven kitchen yields a gamble - you never know what you can expect.