Empellón Taqueria - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Restaurant Review

Empellón Taqueria

by Tara Q. Thomas • May 7, 2012

In a dark room on a busy corner of the West Village, Alex Stupak has managed to convince a wide swath of New Yorkers that Mexican food can be elegant and inspired through his unusual dishes. The bar scene, however, makes it clear that people are more stubborn when it comes to drinks. Their loss: Natalie Tapken has put together an excellent wine list. Although the guacamole—a refreshingly un-fussed with bowl of mashed avocado with small bowls of arbol and smoked cashew salsa alongside—does provide an excellent counterpoint to the bite of El Burro, a Tequila drink spiked with ginger beer and chipotle, it’s also a fantastic foil for Ariania Occhipinti’s SP68, an earthy, smooth albanello-zibibbo blend from Sicily. When it comes to tacos, combinations like hedgehog mushrooms with tomatillo-chipotle salsa, sweetbreads with roasted maitakes or braised tongue with potatoes surely deserve more than beer; a split of Lallier Champagne is more like it, or maybe Pibaron’;s Bandol Rosé. For the “queso fundido” or plump sopes with smoked plantains, choose between chardonnay made in Red Hook, Brooklyn or Puligny-Montrachet; lamb barbacoa needs Foradori’s teroldego, or Paul Achs Langer Acker Zweigelt from Austria’s Burgenland. And there’s always R. López de Heredía’s Gran Reserva 1991. Drink it now, while everyone’s still distracted by the cocktails.

230 W. 4th St., New York, NY

Mexican

212-367-0999

Tara Q. Thomas

is W&S’s editor at large and covers the wines of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe for the magazine.

This story appears in the print issue of April 2012.
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TAGS Mexican New & Notable New York New York City Restaurant

David Paradela
Associate Editor

David joined Wine & Spirits in 2021 after immersing himself in the world of wine at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally from Boston, he graduated from Boston University with a degree in English and completed a master’s degree in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College in 2021. Prior to working at the magazine, he served as an editor and staff writer for the music blog Sound of Boston and worked in scientific publishing. Aside from wine, he loves basketball, arguing about Taylor Swift’s best album, and everything Greta Gerwig touches.

Corey Warren
Tastings Editor

Corey Warren moved to New York in 2015—fifteen years too late to join The Strokes—after earning a degree at Cornell in Comparative Literature. He started polishing glasses at Betony and threw himself into the restaurant world. Later, while a captain at Aquavit, he began working part time in the Wine & Spirits tasting department. Now, in addition to running tastings, he serves as critic for the wines of the Loire, Southern France, Argentina and South Africa. Corey likes almost anything bubbly, from Miller High Life, the Champagne of beers, to Champagne, the Champagne of Champagne, but he’ll drink anything once, and loves finding unique wines.

Tara Q. Thomas
Editor at Large

Since Tara Q. Thomas joined Wine & Spirits in 1997, she’s traveled the wine world from Argentina to Australia. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, with more than 20 years of experience in the food and wine world, Tara puts her culinary knowledge to use as W&S’s resident food critic, and is the critic for the wines of Austria, Germany, Eastern Europe, Argentina, and the Mediterranean. She’s particularly enthusiastic about the wines of Greece, where she once lived and cooked. Outside of W&S, Tara has authored two books, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wine Basics and The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Wine; contributed to the Oxford Companion to Cheese as well as Oxford’s forthcoming volume on spirits; and writes a wine column for Culture: The Word on Cheese.

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Patricio Tapia
Senior Correspondent

After graduating with a degree in journalism from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Patricio Tapia attended Bordeaux University in France, where he studied for a diploma in wine tasting and winemaking. Since then, he has visited wine regions around the world and authored several books, including his annual Descorchados, a Chilean wine guide; The Wines of Colchagua Valley; TodoVino and Wines for Great Occasions. Tapia is also the South American correspondent for The Oxford Companion to Wine, The World Atlas of Wine and Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book. For the past three years, he’s been a host on the El Gourmet channel in South America. At Wine & Spirits, Tapia is the critic for the wines of Argentina, Chile and Spain, and regularly contributes articles on these regions.