This week, as the downtown fashion set performs acrobatics on heels, the garment district, where Fashion Week began, more than seventy years ago, lives on, clogged with delivery trucks, as it’s been since the twenties. In 1950, a letter to the Times complained, of the area’s lunchtime streets, “The situation is like trying to pass a six-inch stream of water through a two-inch pipe.” But there’s a charm in dodging Z-racks and darting past wholesale prom dresses—especially if you duck into one of the hidden eateries, a fixture of the neighborhood since its start.
At Acuario Café, who needs signs when deliverymen and construction workers form a line that stretches out the door? It’s run by Rodolfo Perez, who was a factory worker upstairs before he bought the building’s service-entrance hamburger stand and turned it into a Dominican joint. This is not exceptional food, but that’s not the point. It’s hearty and filling, cheap and fast: half a fried chicken and a pound of rice and beans is five bucks.
Better is El Sabroso, a pan-Latin eatery in the back of a loading dock, run by the Ecuadorian Tony Molinas. He arrives at seven in the morning, and marinates the pork and chicken for three hours before throwing them into a tiny oven, on very low heat, until the lunch rush starts, just before noon. It’s cash only, and offers slightly less hefty portions than Acuario, but it’s still canteen-cheap, doled out on Styrofoam plates. The clientele includes drivers, painters, and office workers with I.D. badges dangling from their belt loops. “Calvin Klein e-mailed me yesterday,” a ponytailed blonde waiting in line said recently. Most people get their food to go, but there are counter stools, and a table.
All mains come with yellow rice and red beans (vegetarians, take heart, Molinas swears they’re meatless), and a handful of iceberg lettuce. The pork-chop frisbees and cartilaginous ribs are unfortunate missteps, but the stewed beef and the oxtail are tender and tomato-rich. “Everyone loves the baked chicken,” Elizabeth, the cashier, says, and everyone’s right. It’s as moist as if it were braised, but the skin is crispy from the slow roasting. The real star, though, is the hot sauce. It’s the marigold color of a Buddhist monk’s cloak, with a complex, bitter heat, and it should be spooned onto everything. Molinas bought the recipe from the Dominican girl in Queens who taught him to cook when he first moved to town, in the nineties. A Panamanian patron, inspired by a hot-sauce-loaded bite of chicken, proclaims El Sabroso “simultaneously the best of New York City, and the best escape from it.” (Acuario Café, dishes $4-$8; El Sabroso, dishes $6-$7.50.) ♦
