To Build a Home

The City According to Hot Literati: Cocina Consuelo

I’ve been chasing home for a long time.

I moved to New York in July. It’s always been a little complicated, though. Home was never really home growing up. And for the past four years I’ve been yo-yoing across coasts and between cities, my favorite certainties cut short by the blunt knife of academic calendars. Just as I’d begin to appreciate the warm suburban hum of East Cambridge or memorize the route to my favorite L.A. art ho coffee shop, the semester would end. And I was tasked with hauling ass back to Fremont, to Downtown Boston, to a Central Cambridge AirBnb with a mammal living in the walls. New York, post-grad, promised an end to this madness.

I guess it takes time to build a home. To decide that yes, this is my coffee shop and my bookstore and my deli and I will bring the people that I love here. Maybe it’s one of those things that can’t be controlled, that just sort of is.

I have trouble with those things, the ones that take time.

And so, since I’ve graduated, I’ve been exploring the concept of “home” with investigative fervor. Mainly: How can you translate home, the feeling of it, into a concrete reality?

Around August, the answer appeared in the form of a brilliant blue wall that appeared seemingly out of nowhere in my neighborhood.

An introduction to Cocina Consuelo

Cocina Consuelo is a charming Mexican restaurant in Hamilton Heights. There’s a long list of writers who have captured the Consuelo dining experience for the likes of The New Yorker, Eater, The Infatuation, the Times and now, by me, for an internet blog run by twenty-somethings who like to party and think about life a little too much. It is very much emerging as a darling of the New York dining scene.

We will all tell you, in our own way, the truth: Consuelo is a star.

As most of the above writers have noted, what makes Consuelo special is beyond food. It’s the feeling of being there.

As a home-curious 20something, I was immediately drawn to Conseulo’s bright character and intentionally-adorned interior. After a few quesadillas and Sunday morning masa pancake indulgences, I got to know Karina and Lalo, the restaurateurs behind the space. And this piece began to take shape in the back of my mind.

So, I showed up with home-baked cookies, and bribed Karina to sit down with me and dish. She obliged, pulling back the curtains on Consuelo’s excellence, which began (perhaps unsurprisingly) as a supper club she and Lalo ran out of their apartment.

Karina on Consuelo

“The way we like to tell our message, it’s not so much speaking it but more through actions,” Karina begins. “Like here, instead of using seed oils and things that are not necessarily the best for you, we use beef fat, bone marrow fat, olive oil… we’re not necessarily putting out there in the menu but that’s the way we’re making the food because that’s the best way to feed people in our understanding.”

In the background, the elements of the busy restaurant pull at my attention and I struggle to stay focused on the conversation. Karina, on the other hand, has this incredible awareness filtering system, a nearly superhuman ability to discern what is worthy of dedicated attention. The babble of children, the patrons’ chatter, dishes clinking all lay dormant until, say, a patron has a question or her daughter, Youahali, walks a little too far out into the sidewalk. Karina switches, addresses the event and slips smoothly back into our conversation. As if no time has passed.

“So that’s kind of our message,” she continues after saying goodbye to a woman who asked permission to put Consuelo on a list of some sort. “To treat people like home. We are transitioning from feeding people in our apartment to now, to the storefront. Once you’re here, now you’re family. And I’m saying you, too, like Ana.” She gestures at me and we both giggle, she’s nicknamed me Ana.

I go on to ask about her background (culinary school, proud Harlem native), the restaurant’s color palette (yellow and blue, inspired by trips to Mexico) and hospitality (it’s not so much something that’s taught, in Karina’s opinion, but rather an innate sensibility) and land on partnership. She didn’t like herself when she and her partner Lalo first met, Karina tells me, but his acceptance of her helped her find a version that she liked.

Now, they own a business together. When I watch them interact, there’s no unhealthy power dynamic. They’re constantly growing with each other, Karina tells me. The relationship is a collaboration, and that spirit is infused into the restaurant.

“He didn’t want to change me even though I wanted to change me. Those parts of me that I’m now shining a light on, he saw those—I’m guessing, right?—and then it was just me trying to find those.”

That resonates.

“Good Service”

The conversation meanders. I quietly panic about my fledgling interviewer skills and blurt out a half-thought out question about service. I state, somewhat foolishly, that service is about making people feel good and would she mind telling me what she thinks about that? Karina’s brow furrows.

“I mean, it’s not necessarily to make people feel comfortable. We are giving people the service we enjoy and the experience they would get if they came into our home. We are not necessarily trying to cater to everyone.”

Hmm.

Karina continues, “I mean, obviously, we are kind people. But we’re not trying to make people feel any type of way. You said something specific, trying to make people feel good and I think that stays on the surface.” She goes on to explain how Consuelo balances authenticity with warmth, aiming to create an experience that respects both the restaurant’s identity and guests’ needs.

Something clicks. I think Karina sees the lights flicker on behind my eyes and she goes for the home run, tethering the idea with a concrete example.

“Like, let’s say for example, the menu. If they say oh I don’t like this, can you make this—we don’t give people whatever they want. Hopefully they feel like they’re in our home, and they feel a connection. But we also want them to experience who we are and what we’re trying to do.”

“Yes, we’re going to treat you great because that’s who we are and that’s what we want to do, but there are also boundaries. It’s a little different than trying to make everyone feel good.”

I chew on the idea for a minute. “Right, so that’s not the primary thing,” I respond. “This place is you, you’re being you, and if it doesn’t resonate with people that’s okay.”

“Exactly.”

Home and the Self

This year, most of my struggles have stemmed from the fact that I’m experiencing a bit of something Karina touched on earlier in our interview, this feeling of realizing I’m not always someone I like to be around. I’ve found it difficult to tune in to the parts of me that I do like and respect. Probably because I haven’t even been trying to until very recently, until after Karina said this:

“At least for me it was like, okay, I think I’m this person but how do I make sure that I’m this person all the time? How do I make sure that I act in ways that I am going to feel happy about… It’s a constant process that I’m waking up and I’m liking me and then I’m letting myself out.”

A constant and for me, right now, a tiring process. I worry I’m being too self-indulgent (see: the iconic Jemima Kirke meme). But I would rather be self-indulgent than live obliviously.

There’s a lot you can do to dream up a good home. You can buy the drawer organizers, the vintage furniture, put up the wall decor. That will all make it feel familiar and safe and good. To build a great home, though, my working theory is that you need a strong foundation.

Cocina Consuelo is a great home. And that is at least partly due to the fact that Karina and Lalo wake up and make intentional, honest choices based on how they want to show up in the world. They’ve created a space that can hold all parts of them; the brilliant, the questionable and the in-between. All of it.

Dinner at Consuelo

I’m drinking orange wine at the bar. Getting better at being able to stand myself, but I’m nowhere near where I’d like to be.

Hailo’s got a cocktail. It’s dark out and Consuelo has transformed into a moody, sleek version of its morning self. It’s the first time I’ve been here past 2pm.

“Oh, I know you,” Karina teases as she sees me at the bar. Hailo and I settle in, we’re long overdue for a meeting. I like our “meetings” because they’re half business, half NYC gossip, and a whole lot of big sister-esque perspective. Karina, cooking her heart out at the stove, drops in and out of our conversation.

My time with Literati is ending soon. I tell her I don’t know what I’m doing. She tells me that’s 22. And that it’s a little better, but not much at 24. “Thirty is where it’s at,” Hailo declares, only for Karina to retort quickly:

“Oh I disagree. Thirty isn’t any better. Thirty is, like, real. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she half-jokes. We all laugh. It’s a nice reminder that learning isn’t tethered to any specific age.

I, 22, and freshly out of college. Hailo, a young, cool CEO. Karina, the owner of one of NYC’s hottest new restaurants, with probably more life experience than both of us. And yet, for a minute, the external accolades fall away and we’re the same. Just people trying to figure it all out.

I look at the masks on the wall and nod my head to the ticking beat. Two stuffed jalapeños and an ensalada later, Hailo and I are ready to close out.

Karina surprises us. Two spoons materialize, then a plate. The Colcanap, Karina’s painfully delicious take on Tres Leches, arrives.

Never ones to turn down dessert, we lock in. In between bites, Hailo and I talk a little more about our end of year plans, our love lives (or, in my case, the lack thereof), where we want to be in the future. It’s soft, spongy, and doused in whole milk. So, so good.

For a moment, I’m seven years old eating Diwali sweets at a kitchen counter in Santa Clara. Kids running around with sparklers in the backyard. It feels foreign. I don’t want to go back and at the same time, I really miss it.

I’m growing tired of shedding skin each year and chasing my tail. Do I even know what I want at the end of all of this? I hope to figure it out, I’d rather be doing this than living a mindless life.

How am I supposed to build a home when I can’t even hear myself think?

Hungry for it

I’m still figuring out all the ingredients needed to make me feel at home, but I’ll share a crucial one I’ve picked up from Consuelo: silence. Not the auditory kind—you’ll have to forgive me here I am about to get a bit woo-woo—but the metaphysical kind. The kind that quells noise.

“You know this world is so connected, it’s so hard to disconnect in a lot of ways. How do you block out all the noise? Escaping out the noise of what’s out there, and when I say the noise it’s everything. It’s family, the combination of everything I’ve been through in my life,” Karina had told me earlier.

You know the noise. It’s billboards and storefronts, emails, texts from family and friends, Pinterest boards and Instagram caricatures of happy lives. It is extremely hard to escape. If we are not careful, which most of us (myself included) aren’t, it seeps into every corner of our existence.

I want to build my home so badly. I’m a little desperate for it, for the safety, for the silence, for the favored certainties. In writing this piece, I’ve grown to respect Karina and Lalo even more, who cut through to build something meaningful for themselves and the people they love. How special that is, how difficult it is to do!

Consuelo’s success comes from its ability to stand out in a sea of noise—its intentions are tangible, its love rings organic. When you visit, you’ll get it. It’s the feeling of being in the home of people who are at home in themselves.

I, and New York, are hungry for it.

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Interested in visiting? Cocina Consuelo has live music on Fridays—highly recommend swinging by then! Don’t forget to contribute to the live music fund if you do so.

About the writer: Ananya is a 22-year-old writer based in New York. She typically writes about whatever is on her mind and in her neighborhood. This year, it’s mostly been technology, love and dining. You probably know her for The Alive Girl Diaries, a Hot Literati series exploring Gen Z’s relationship with tech. For more, you can subscribe to her (nascent) Substack newsletter, Actually, I’m not really sure yet.