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"FacebookPinterest\n\nDanny Bowien, owner of Mission Cantina and Mission Chinese Food, the most successful franchise since Mission: Impossible, has been stressed of late. He opened Mission Chinese in New York, closed Mission Chinese in New York (blame the Department of Health), opened Mission Cantina in New York, and is preparing for the birth of his first child.\n\nI saw him for the first time in two years when I walked into Mission Cantina on a quiet afternoon a few weeks ago. He said hello. It took me a few seconds to recognize him.\n\nHe explained that he had been through a lot, and it had taken a toll. I stopped him. It wasn't that he looked so bad. It's that he's never looked so good.\n\n\"Stopped drinking, got older, cut my hair,\" the 31-year-old pointed out. His hair is now fashionably and asymmetrically cut, with ombr\u00E9 shading. Back in San Francisco, it was almost down to his waist. He looked like somebody had grabbed it and dragged him down the street.\n\n Mission Cantina looks good, too, a lot better than the shuttered Mission Chinese, also located on Orchard Street. I was in the army long ago, and that moody, murky joint reminded me of an off-limits bar in some seedy Asian port.\n\n Mission Cantina is bright and cheerful, with splashes of white, green, and orange. It's particularly appealing in the late afternoon when the setting sun peeps through surrounding tenements, lighting up the seafoam-green brick walls and the red banquettes.\n\nBowien appears to have shopped for decorative touches at a Mexican version of a Party City store. Pi\u00F1ata-style burros hang from the ceiling. Just inside the front door is a mini-shrine much like those dedicated to Our Lady Of Guadalupe, except this one honors singer Ricky Martin. I counted 22 pennies and one nickel tossed in as offerings and asked Bowien if that was the day's take. He said it was the sum of all donations since the restaurant opened, adding cheerfully, \"I guess that's all we're worth to people right now.\"\n\nBowien's dishes are thoughtfully assembled and remarkably inviting, the ingredients well-sourced, as his always are. One distinct advantage of Mission Cantina over the New York Mission Chinese is that the food is spiced more gently. You'll still feel the burn, but you won't writhe in pain.\n\nBowien told me he had no idea he was going to end up with a Mexican restaurant. His notion was to use the space for an adjunct to Mission Chinese, a spot for customers to hang out while they waited as long as four hours for a table. Then he decided to turn the space into a California-style taqueria\u2014not up to his level of ambition, in my opinion. When he was planning the taqueria, he traveled to Mexico City on a whim. \"With the first bite of tortilla, the corn flavor insane, everything changed,\" he told me. \"I thought, \u2018We have to make our own masa.' I got equipment from Mexico City, had it shipped up. The machine looks like a lawnmower. The first week, it broke. It came with no instructions, no warranty.\"\n\nAt first, I figured Mission Cantina to be a standard taqueria enhanced with appetizers and side dishes. It's more than that. His tortillas, the foundation of all tacos, are handmade, taste like corn, and are significantly thicker than the usual kind. They're soft as a serape.\n\nTacos usually, but not always, come atop two tortillas, for reasons never officially documented. The various explanations are that two tortillas provide extra support, that two tortillas provide extra nourishment, and that the second tortilla is needed for mop-up duty, cleaning the plate. I've seldom come upon a tortilla tasty enough to merit a double dose, but Bowien's are exceptional.\n\nHe's also got taco-truck pricing: two for $5.50 for vegetable, two for $6 for meat, two for $7 for skate wing tempura. Think of those as estimates. Bowien changes prices as often as an auctioneer.\n\nI've got one small problem with his tacos: crema (Mexican cr\u00E8me fra\u00EEche) and salsa overload. To me the excess sauces mute the other ingredients, and every taco contains a variety of goodies worth savoring\u2014the fermented pineapple with the al pastor, the pork jowl with the carnitas, the tomato pickle with the tongue, and the Brie with the braised greens. (That final taco has recently, and regrettably, been retired from service.) Each diner gets what you might think are an abundance of napkins, a pile of three, but once the sauces come slithering out the sides, you'll need more.\n\n To me, the only taco combination that failed was shrimp and beef tripe, and it wasn't because the flavors clashed. It's because the tripe was tough. The skate wing taco is a must-eat, despite the goopiness, simply because fish is rarely fried this perfectly.\n\nAmong the menu sections is a small list of large plates\u2014really large plates, generous enough for a family to share. They come with a pile of those warm tortillas, and here they're slathered with housemade butter tarted up with sheep's milk yogurt. Among my most enjoyable moments at Mission Cantina was sitting in a near-trance, happily eating one tortilla after another.\n\nOne of those large plates consists of a whole rotisserie chicken, underwhelming, stuffed with a complex mixture of rice, chorizo, raisins, and pecans. The second is fried chicken that's sweet, crunchy, and fiery enough to make up for the minimalism of the spit-roasted version. It's enhanced with honey and hot sauce.\n\nEven better, actually way better, is the whole rabbit, an occasional special. In case you haven't noticed, New York has become a warren of rabbit dishes, usually served whole and typically very expensive, thanks to those rascally rabbit cooks. Here the price is $32.50, which is about half of what you might pay elsewhere. The legs are steamed in a banana leaf with a delicate coffee-hibiscus mole, and the loin and rib meat is rolled with collard greens and topped with a salsa verde. Now you understand why this is much more than a taqueria. There is always genius somewhere in Bowien's cooking. At Mission Cantina, it's the rabbit.\n\nBowien's combinations, so fascinating in the tacos and so successful in the shared plates, can be perplexing in the appetizers and side dishes. A ceviche of beef hearts (chewy) topped with Hokkaido scallops (velvety) is a little wacky, as is grilled spring onions with crisp nori. If these are authentic Mexican combinations, what we'd be eating if Santa Anna had been victorious, I'm personally grateful for the Alamo.\n\nCreamed masa set in a bowl alongside beer-braised collard greens is a little awkward, but inasmuch as everyone I brought to Mission Cantina wanted to order it, I can't argue against success. If you prefer absolute familiarity in your appetizers, order the fresh queso oaxaco, which tastes exactly like mozzarella. I thought the smoked fingerling potatoes accented with bits of chorizo provided uneasy diners with safety in side dishes, but now they're gone, too. The fried chicken liver presentation is towering, a lively dish you would expect at a Mexican beach resort.\n\nThe wine I tried was so-so, but who drinks wine with Mexican food? The drinks are tasty, as well as amusing, the best being the Jesse Koide, named after one of Bowien's lieutenants. It's a not-too-sweet, not-too-fruity, manly sort of sangria, made with Lambrusco (bubbly wine), amaro (Italian digestif), and Mexican coke (cult beverage). You've never had anything like it, certainly not for $7.\n\nBy now, it's obvious that Bowien has created a stylish culinary genre, one that was successful even before he turned stylish himself. He's not just a chef, he's also a fiscal phenom capable of opening hip restaurants with unrealistically low pricing. You can find a lot of cheap food in New York, especially on the Lower East Side, but most cheap food isn't worth eating.\n\nMexican food in particular is rarely good when it's done inexpensively. When I told him how startled I was that the Mission brand could go Mexican, he replied, characteristically, \"What am I doing with a Mexican restaurant?\" He paused. \"What am I doing with any restaurant?\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nPhotograph by Evan Sung. \n\nRating: Two Stars.\n\n  Don't Miss This... Cocktail: The Jesse Koide, $7\n\n Appetizer: Chicken Wings, $11\n\n Taco, meat: Carnitas, $6 for two\n\n Taco, fish: Skate Wing Tempura, $7 for two\n\n Side: Masa and Collard Greens, $8.50\n\n To Share: Rabbit (if available), $32.50"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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