My dining-out-partner-in-crime and I stumbled into Ofrenda after bopping around the West Village, and managed to get the last table in what is apparently a locally packed-out weeknight hotspot.
Ofrenda has that classic Manhattan lowkey-upscale-albeit-casually-trendy vibe. The wall stage-right is decorated the kinds of tchotchkes your Brooklyn hipster-friend acquires when they go on those antiquing trips you politely decline every time they ask you to go with them. Sage-colored cabinets and shelves are decorated with obscure pots and glassware, religious statues and paraphernalia, the occasional skull, exposed Edison bulbs, and arbitrary, dusty canvas-bound books from the aforementioned Brooklyn hipster-friend's personal collection. There's a reason we decline the hipster-friend invites to dumpster dive, but Ofrenda nailed it; the wall of shelves falls straight in line with their too-cool-for-school-(but-we-are-varsity-students) mood.
I had a thing for "prickly pears" long before I knew what they were. "Prickly pear" appears in my favorite poem, "The Hollow Men," by T.S. Eliot--a poem I've memorized and read to myself more times than I'm willing to admit. The lyrical stanza where "prickly pear" appears reads as follows:
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
I never knew what a prickly pear was nor did I care: for years I thought it was nothing more than an arcane Eliot concoction. I was in Aruba when I learned what it was and saw one for the first time, nearly passing out as my literary life and real life collided. A prickly pear is a cactus properly known as Opuntia. But now, thanks to Ofrenda, I know prickly pears in another context: as margaritas.
While the prickly pear margarita left me curious about what its flavor was to begin with, Ofrenda's traditional margarita had me glowing with that "this-is-so-sweet-and-delicious-it's-almost-juice-and-will-be-dangerous-if-I-order-more" aura.
Other notable food-related things: the guacamole was fresh and crisp, and the tampiqueña entree (skirt steak, enchilada, avocado salad, refried beans, and queso fresco) was superb. I'll never understand the paper-thin decorative radish slice trend, but they looked nice strewn across all the food we ordered, so I won't dive into a criticism of them here.
Notable things unrelated to food: the skull logo design is excellent especially when foil-pressed into the menu. The staff was friendly and somewhat inattentive, which I'm marking as a good thing--it's quite lovely to be left alone to enjoy drinks/food/milieu at a place like Ofrenda, which offers all of the above.
I've already amended the last stanza of "The Hollow Men" to conclude a different Yelp review (for the Upper West Side's Shalel Lounge, another place where I encountered a prickly-pear related drink; if it's not obvious by now, I'll order a literature-related anything solely based on my adoration for it). Instead, I'll snag the first stanza and delicately adjust it for Ofrenda:
We are the hollow men
We are the hungry men
Sitting together
Guacamole filled with lime. Alas!
Our dried glasses, when
We drink together
Are quiet and full of froth
As sizzle steak on a plank
Or hipster heart overcome
By the prickly pear
And because I legitimately cannot help myself, I (yet again) retrofitted the last stanza of "The Hollow Men" for this review:
This is the way the dinner ends
This is the way the dinner ends
This is the way the dinner ends
Not with a bang but a radish slice. read more