Pampano
Plácido Domingo must be nibbling his way through the Mexican-chef ranks. First he opened a Spanish restaurant called Domingo and persuaded Rosa Mexicano’s Josefina Howard to try her hand at Iberian cuisine. Then he recruited cookbook author Patricia Quintana, who installed an elegant, if short-lived, all-Mexican menu. Now he’s teamed up with Maya’s Richard Sandoval to transform the skylit Turtle Bay duplex yet again, this time into the coastal-Mexican seafood restaurant Pampano. The interior has gone lighter and brighter, with a multitude of bas-reliefs and a bar dispensing clams, oysters, seviches, and the obligatory margaritas. With dishes like serrano-chili-spiked smoked-marlin dip and seared scallops with prickly-pear-and-baby-cactus salad, Sandoval aims to elevate Mexican seafood to new heights—or at least keep his finicky partner culinarily content.
209 East 49th Street
212-751-4545

Mexican Sandwich Company
Everyone mourning the recent demise of Wyanoka and its crispy-red-snapper tacos will be happy to learn that chef Chris Santos (and said tacos) have resurfaced in Park Slope, where he’s putting his own wildly inventive spin on quesadillas at the Mexican Sandwich Company. Triple-decked and stuffed with elaborate combinations like wild plum and Brie with double-smoked bacon and lavender-chili honey (or customized to order), they come in six- and twelve-inch versions that fit perfectly in pizza-delivery boxes. And in a fanciful foray into Paul Newman territory, Santos is bottling a line of salsas, in newfangled flavors like tomatillo-feta-and-corn.
322 Fifth Avenue, near 3rd Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn
718-369-2058

Hacienda de Argentina
As much set designers as restaurateurs, the prop-happy partners behind Casa La Femme, Eros, and Tapas Lounge have gone thoroughly gaucho at Hacienda de Argentina, their rustic new steakhouse. To conjure the proper pampas atmosphere, they’ve outfitted the former Red Bar in dark woods and animal skins, and concocted a meat lover’s menu of grass-fed beef, empanadas, and Italian-Argentine hybrids like grilled provolone and noquis (Southern Hemisphere gnocchi). Mate, the indigenous, mildly stimulating tea sipped from a communal gourd, helps set the South American mood.
339 East 75th Street
212-472-5300

Heartland Brewery
With the opening of the fourth branch of the Heartland Brewery brewpub chain in the spaces once occupied by the old North Star Pub and Sloppy Louie’s, owner Jon Bloostein has some pretty big cups to fill. He’ll answer the challenge with Heartland’s signature draft beers and an abbreviated burgers-and-Buffalo-wings menu, not to mention some new seafood additions like teriyaki salmon and tequila shrimp. Not quite the shad-roe omelettes at Louie’s that Joseph Mitchell made famous, but such are the preferences of today’s Wall Streeters and South Street Seaporters.
93 South Street
646-572-2337