In Midtown, Cuerno, the new Mexican restaurant that opened in June, is a thrilling experience: part restaurant, part dinner theater, and part shrine to steak, all wrapped up in a high-energy, tequila-soaked bow. If you’re having a bad day, this place will fix you up just fine.
Cuerno is the first U.S. restaurant from Alberto Martínez and Victor Setién, founders of the Costeño Group, which runs over 50 high-end restaurants and more than 10 concepts across Mexico and Spain. This specific spot bills itself as a “vibrant Mexican steakhouse,” and the title tracks. The menu is full of richly marbled cuts of beef sourced from Demkota Ranch Beef, a network of small family ranches across the pristine grasslands of South Dakota. At the restaurant, the beef is aged for 24 days; when ordered, it’s given a generous shake of flaky Colima sea salt and ground black pepper, and then seared over a Josper charcoal grill, the kitchen’s beating heart. This oven is a sort of magician, giving whatever enters its fire-breathing mouth — steak, fish, vegetables — a beautifully caramelized crust which acts like a robe, sealing in all the juices. There may not be a reason to eat steak anywhere else.
The Corazón de Filete at Cuerno. Sofia Barraso/Cuerno
From the street, Cuerno, which is located on the ground floor of the Time Life Building, seems like a ho-hum law firm or dull accounting office. But step inside and through the looking glass, and you’re thrown into another world where there’s nothing but a huge party. The room is exuberant, full of guitar-forward Mexican music, the electricity of tequila in the glass, and steaks on fire. Carts roam the aisles, where servers carve Flintstone-sized tomahawk steaks and margaritas are shaken and poured into fat glasses with chile-crusted rims, giving the place a buzzing energy that feels far away from the stuffy halls of Midtown.
Designed by Mexican architecture firm A de Arquitectos, the restaurant has the feel of an open-air hacienda on a warm night, with vaulted ceilings and exposed brick. The hand-carved woodwork frames a striking central ceramic tile mural by Saltillo-based artist Federico Jordán, featuring a smiling skeleton in a cobalt-blue hat riding a bull, tipping his hat in a gesture of welcome.
The dining room at Cuerno. Sofia Barraso/Cuerno
The salsas at Cuerno. Sofia Barraso/Cuerno
Cuerno’s dinner is a feast that begins with a buffet of house-made salsas. This includes one served warm in a mini molcajete, with a fresh combination of smoky tomato and garlic that’s easy to spoon over anything, from the long, thin shards of freshly fried tortillas to steaks and fish. There are four others, from a mild macha to the spicy zippy jalapeño, and the hottest of them all, the piquin limon. The complimentary refillable condiments are served with a little booklet, so you can keep that on hand, if, like me, your brain is just not able to contain all that information at once.
Start with guacamole ($19), creamy avocado from Michoacan that’s kicked up with lime, cilantro, tomatoes, onions, serrano peppers, and a puddle of chile-forward salsa pasilla. We loved the thinly-sliced Japanese hamachi crudo ($24), which is adorned with an aguachile flavor bomb of chile chiltepín and salsa rasurada. The latter is a sauce stemming from Mexico’s Pacific coast and takes its name from the Mexican word for “shaved,” a nod to its finely shaved vegetables (in this case, red onions, cilantro, scallions, and radishes), which lend a mix of spicy, salty, and acidic flavors to the glossy fish. There’s a cauliflower starter ($21) that doesn’t work — it’s a mash-up of truffles, mayo, cheese, and pistachios that’s overwrought — skip it.
The hamachi crudo at Cuerno Sofia Barraso/Cuerno
The food magic comes from the steaks, of which chef Oriol Mendivil offers six choices. The largest is a 52-ounce salt-crusted tomahawk ($175), the smallest (and just as delicious) is an eight-ounce filet mignon ($55), and, in between, there are 16- and 28-ounce rib-eyes prepared with your choice of salt crust or in a norteño-style with pepper, garlic, bone marrow, and spicy salsa piquín. There are no wrong answers here.
But don’t fill up completely, because you cannot miss the tacos. In particular, the Taco Taquero ($38) is served tableside from carts run by suited servers in white caps who brandish blades to dice up glistening slabs of salt-charred skirt steak, scraping the unctuous, buttery marrow from canoe-sized bones and adding a bit of piquin limon salsa and a pinch of fleur de sel. They spoon the marvelous mixture into warm, soft corn tortillas meant to be quickly devoured. While not served with as much ceremony, the Tacos Richi ($12) are also excellent, where the tortillas get a grilled cheese crust and are then filled with thinly sliced rib-eye, a salsa verde, chicharron, and slices of ripe avocado.
The Taco Richi at Cuerno. Courtesy of Costeño Group
The bar, as you might imagine, leans heavily on tequilas — margaritas in flavors like classic, tamarind, and pineapple. But this is why I was so disappointed in the Cuerno margarita ($21), which was all one-note sweetness with no tartness or balance; I could not drink it. It’s better to go with the mezcalita ($20), which counters the cloying sweetness with smoke. The wine list has some impressive Mexican and French producers, but it is not priced well. There are only a handful of bottles under $100, with most hovering at or above the $200 price point.
Cuerno’s desserts are terrific, and while I’d eaten enough food, I had no trouble polishing off the pastel de campechanas ($24), a vanilla ice cream cake layered with crispy caramel-coated Mexican puff pastry (campechana), and topped with pecans and dulce de leche. Sorry, folks; Carvel is done in my book.