Casa Enrique

Casa Enrique is the Michelin-starred Mexican restaurant that looks nothing like one: a small, white-walled room on a quiet Long Island City block, run by chef Cosme Aguilar, whose cooking draws on his family's kitchens in Chiapas. It held its star for years while staying resolutely a neighborhood restaurant — no tasting-menu theater, no dress code, just mole and cochinita pibil of startling depth.

The lamb barbacoa and the mole de Piaxtla are the dishes people cross the river for, and the margaritas hold their own against the food. The Gantry Plaza waterfront at Hunters Point is a short walk away, which makes the before-dinner sunset almost mandatory.