The ideal flour tortilla is very thin with a slight chew, made with high-quality grain and a bunch of pork lard. This is the crux of acclaimed New York pop-up Border Town from chef Jorge Aguilar. Earlier during the pandemic, he sought to recreate these Sonoran-style flour tortillas, which he grew up on. “I wanted to make what I wanted to eat,” he tells Eater. “I don’t know if I perfected it, but I made that version of what I remember.” And it turns out, it’s what the rest of New York wanted to eat, too, and the pop-ups often sold out.
Luckily, it’s now much easier to get those coveted tortillas. Co-owners and couple Aguilar and Amanda Rosa turned their roaming pop-up into a sit-down restaurant with a full bar in Brooklyn this month, with the help of new co-owner Ben Turley (formerly of Meat Hook) and head bartender Patrick Bradley. The new Border Town opened in Greenpoint at 189 Nassau Avenue, at Humboldt Street, on Friday, January 16.
For now, Border Town is open for table-service dinner only because the kitchen has no gas, but the unexpected curveball has its benefits. “You already know us for our mornings; see what else we can do,” Rosa says.
Aguilar, Rosa, Turley, and Bradley all live in Greenpoint, which makes the location so significant. One of their goals is to ensure it’s a neighborhood- and family-friendly space. It’s walk-in only — in contrast to the other buzzy hot new restaurants that are wedded to reservation apps. The casual dining room is big, with larger tables for groups. Affordability is crucial amidst the reality of $25 drinks around town: Here, they’re $15.
“This is for our neighbors,” Rosa says. “These are our people. I don’t care about answering to anyone else aside from them. They are our judge and jury.”
From the start, Border Town has been the duo’s vision of Northern Mexican cuisines, stemming from Sonora, along with Baja California, Monterey, and elsewhere. “We didn’t want to be everything to everyone,” Rosa says. “I feel like the most successful restaurants are places that actually have an identity.”
They’re part of the current wave of businesses showcasing what actually good flour tortillas are in New York, a city that hadn’t been known for having good versions before. See: recent newcomers Los Burritos Juarez in Fort Greene (Juarez-style burritos) and Mexican restaurant Corima’s Park Slope daytime spot Vato (Chihuahuan-style burritos).
Aguilar’s commitment to flour tortillas is on full display at the restaurant, where he and the staff roll out, press, and griddle up the bread right at the counter next to the register. “Mexican culture and Mexican food are still growing in New York,” Aguilar says. “I just want to teach people what’s from what region.” The central tortilla ingredient is Los Gallos Sonoran wheat flour sourced directly from Molino La Fama in Hermosillo, Sonora. This import was “non-negotiable,” Rosa explains. “That is what makes the product.”
Border Town’s dinner menu includes frijoles con veneno, where Aguilar takes refried beans and adds carne con chile, served with flour tortillas or corn tostadas. The guacamole norteño is made fresh-to-order, mixed with red salsa pork belly chicharrónnes, and paired with an Oaxacan corn tlayuda.
Rosa is excited about the tacos de nada, a plate of fried corn tortillas filled with potatoes, paired with tomato broth, queso fresco, and salsa verde. She and Aguilar visited popular Hermosillo vendor Tacos de Nada. “We can’t do it justice the way this lady is doing it,” she says, but they have their own iteration.
The Greenpoint restaurant is Border Town’s first time delving into cocktails. Bradley, who previously worked at Lower East Side bar Mary’s, created a menu highlighting lesser-seen Mexican agave spirits while balancing out the food. The drinks are “really bright, everything really crushable, super-simple, refreshing, but well-made,” he says.
The Desert Negroni uses Cardenxe sotol. “You get a little bit more botanical, a little bit dry and smokier,” Bradley describes. The Picafresa is a spicy-sweet strawberry-tequila-mezcal concoction whose name is a nod to the Mexican candy. The Coco Carajillo is topped with coconut whipped cream and shaved dark chocolate sourced from his family’s shop in Elmhurst, Schmidt’s Candy.
Rosa is particularly thrilled to be serving caguamas, huge beer bottles that are popular in Northern Mexico. The 32-ounce bottles of Carta Blanca and Tecates are served wrapped in Mexican newspapers (like koozies). Aguilar’s father has been saving newspapers in Mexico for the past six months.
Border Town was built with the Andre Architecture firm. A lot of work went into rebuilding the corner space, which was originally half of a larger Polish grocery store. The trio convinced the landlord to rent them half the space; they constructed the dividing wall themselves.
They had to figure out how to organically morph the space from mornings into evenings, something that was key for the team. “We don’t want to isolate one audience from the other,” Turley says. Breakfast and lunch will be counter-service, and it’s table-service for dinner. During the eventual a.m. hours, they’ll cover the liquor-bottle-filled back bar with a shade.
Border Town will change as time goes by. When it will for the daytime, it’ll have those tacos de guisados, with fillings like carne con chile, papas con rajas, manchaca, deshebrada, and a vegetarian mushroom iteration. The burrito is packed with scrambled eggs, refried beans, caramelized onions, bacon, potatoes, cheese, and pickled jalapeños. Breakfast plates come with a choice of guisado, sopa fria (a Mexican pasta salad), refried beans, and tortillas or tostadas. Driftaway is providing the beans for coffee, which includes an iced cafe de olla.
“I’m so excited for what this is going to grow into, because this truly is the first draft,” Rosa says. “We have so many more things that we’re going to bring to the table.” She adds, “The neighborhood will tell us what we need to be.”
Currently, Border Town’s hours are from 5 to 10 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday; 5 p.m. to midnight, Friday; 3 p.m. to midnight, Saturday; and 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday.
