Dolores is full of life. By the time the kitchen opens at 5 p.m., there’s already a line to get into the new Bed-Stuy restaurant, though it doesn’t look like one. In apropos Brooklyn fashion, particularly on an early July night when the still-bright sun makes the air feel as thick as it is hot, those waiting for tables at the no-reservations spot are draped over aluminum chairs outside. With no formal outdoor seating, the chairs are casually scattered around the sidewalk, where small groups gather under the marigold-and-green Dolores awning—and a single tree offering much-needed shade—as smoke swirls from a sidewalk barbecue around the corner of Tompkins Avenue and Bertram L. Baker Way.
Dolores, the new sister restaurant to Bed-Stuy darling, Winona’s, was first slated to open in spring, but was repeatedly delayed. By the time it debuted July 2, folks were eagerly waiting for up to two hours to try it. The restaurant is the second concept from husband-and-wife team Cressida Greening and Emir Dupeyron, whose first joint venture, Winona’s, is a neighborhood haunt for seasonal American cuisine and great wine.
With Dolores, the couple, alongside partner and beverage director Leanne Favre, wanted to offer another place for locals to feel at home. This time, they’re leaning deeper into their roots and serving up an authentic Mexico City cantina-style experience. They scoured properties until they landed on this corner space on Tompkins Avenue, a block lined with several other small, independently owned businesses and restaurants. Dupeyron and Favre have lived in Bed-Stuy for more than a decade, and most of Dolores’ employees live within walking distance.
“We really want our staff to get what it means to be a neighborhood spot in Bed-Stuy and to have an understanding of and respect for that history, which makes it what it is,” Greening told Observer.
Inside the light-filled space, Dolores strikes a balance between a modern Brooklyn hub and an old-world Mexico City cantina. Tables, placed tightly together so you have to shimmy sideways between them, are all filled with patrons. A couple chats as their toddler engages excitedly with her frijoles meneados (cheesy refried beans). Two moms with teenage daughters look over the menu and greet a friend at the bar. Women with gray hair and thick-rimmed glasses lean in over botana, which, alongside tacos and a daily enchilada special, make up the entire menu. And a tall, younger couple sip Negra Modelo and congratulate Dupeyron when he pops out of the kitchen in a paper chef’s cap like one you’d see at a 1950s hamburger spot.
The bar is packed with 20- and 30-somethings sitting, standing, shouting gregariously and tapping into the beat when the music (reverberating from large wooden floor speakers rigged to hang from the ceiling) picks up halfway through my meal, around 6 p.m.
The walls, including the sconces, are slathered in popcorn concrete, which lends itself to the feeling that I’ve dropped into an old stucco casita. This one is made of white tin, and the art is a mix of dark oil paintings that Greening and Dupeyron bought in Mexico City. The bathroom is teal, from the tiles to the sink and toilet, a mid-century treat that feels like it preceded Dolores, but didn’t.
“We wanted [Dolores] to have a sense of familiarity, a lived-in quality. Whenever guests say it doesn’t look new or it feels like it’s been there for years, it makes us feel as though we did something right,” Greening said. “It was important for us that the design imparted a sense of place and a specific quality that one gets in a traditional cantina.”
The menu focuses on traditional cantina bites and bold flavors that don’t temper the spice level. Prices are moderate (at least for New York City), considering the quality, with shareable plates (such as a heaping bowl of $14 guacamole with chips, a $4 fried corn tortilla stuffed with mashed potatoes and bite-sized $12 croquetas filled with queso and wild Mexican greens), single $8 tacos packed with fillings, a hearty plato del dia for $22 to $26 and $2 late night tacos served on weekends from 11 p.m. until the kitchen’s out—or until the place closes at 1 a.m.
While you can get enchiladas (on Saturday and Sunday), short rib asada tacos and chile relleno, Dolores resists mainstream Mexican-American with true cantina staples like lengua “El Bosque” (braised beef tongue tacos) and cochinita pibil “El Turix,” both honorary dishes for the Mexico City restaurants by the same names.
The masa is sourced from Brooklyn tortilleria Sobre Masa, which imports corn from Mexico and uses a traditional Mesoamerican process called nixtamalization to cook maize in a solution of wood ash or lime to soften the kernels and turn them into dough. Dolores makes tortillas by hand, and also uses the masa to make sope, gordita and tlacoyo.
A few standouts included the seafood aguachile with octopus, shrimp and squid, all sliced thin and pressed gently into fresh, zingy lime juice marinade and red onion. It is bright and tangy; good enough to spoon up the liquid on its own when the octopus is gone, though the side of house-made, still slightly warm tortilla chips completes it.
The gordita de chicharrón prensado highlights the earthy depth of blue masa, rolled thicker than a tortilla and griddled. The gordita is a pocket packed with warm, overflowing pork, crema and queso fresco. It has a nice heat level on its own, but the two salsas—rich, herbaceous verde and a creamier tomatillo that was slightly sweet and spicy—served on a plate with limes are fun to alternate with each bite.
The tlacoyo de haba also uses the blue masa, but instead of a round gordita, it is rolled into a teardrop and pressed so that when your fork cuts into it, the smooth fava bean puree oozes out. On top, a prickly pear cactus salad provides a fresh component to the comfort food, showcasing the restaurant’s approach to balancing bold, not overcomplicated flavors.
The drink menu focuses on agave cocktails (all $16), a trio of Mexican cerveza options and some fun low- and no-alcohol offerings, including a suero—a wonderfully hydrating drink of Topo Chico and lime juice with a salt rim known in Mexico to help relieve a hangover. With drinks like the arroz con leche, made with rum, rose vermouth, prickly pear distillate, guava and a rice wash or el humo, which is topped with mole bitters and torched corn husk, Favre shows off her refined mixologist approach. But Dolores stays true to its classic cantina roots with straightforward choices that are just as good on a hot July day, such as a strong margarita or a bottle of cerveza sweating with condensation.
While everything from the fragrant ice-cold tequila, the 1930s Mexican art and the danceworthy playlist make it easy to feel a balance between Bed-Stuy and Mexico City, the one thing I’m left wondering is, who is Dolores?
“Dolores was the name of Emir’s great-grandmother—a juggernaut of a matriarch and by all accounts, an exquisite cook,” Greening said. “We felt the name fit with the cantina concept, in that ‘dolor’ means pain or sorrow and a cantina is somewhere one would historically go to drown one’s sorrows.”
While the name may be fitting for the darker side of cantina culture, Cressida, Dupeyron and Favre pour joy into this cantina, and it shows. Dolores offers a lens into Mexico City but, first and foremost, a spot for Bed-Stuy locals to sink into friends, family, food and conversation, without fuss or reservations.