New York’s hottest love story is cooking inside a tiny 400-square-foot Mexican restaurant in Harlem where the kitchen is in the bar, a piano sits front of house and romance (as well as the irresistible scent of beef birria) is always in the air.
Husband-and-wife team Karina Garcia, 31, and Eduardo “Lalo” Rodriguez, 36, met while working at the now-closed Upper East Side Italian restaurant Morini.
The pair traveled to Puebla, Mexico, together, fell in love, then started making food as a supper club in 2020, slinging tacos from their fifth-floor Harlem walk-up.
It has been successful enough they’ve now opened a tiny 25-seat, walk-in only restaurant — Cocina Consuelo on West 143rd Street and Hamilton Place, where they crafted a specific menu to fit for their small space.
“We do a lot of prep in the morning. I try to have the dishes that are slow roasted almost done so all I have to do is get it in the oven,” Garcia told The Post of outfitting the space with a convection oven to cook her birria, which is slow roasted for 15-hours.
Birria is a traditional beef stew braised in bone marrow from the state of Jalisco. Garcia — a former employee of ultra-fine dining restaurant Eleven Madison Park — serves it over two giant halved bones with salsa roja, pickled onions and cilantro among other hot items, like jalapenos with confit tuna.
The restaurant is rooted in Garcia and Rodriguez’s New York love story. Though, they quip, sparks didn’t immediately fly.
“She didn’t like me,” smiled Rodriguez, who was a busboy at Morini at the time — Karina worked as a waitstaff captain. He noted she warmed up to him when they started talking about their love of Mexican food.
“We had a conversation – one of the few conversations – I told her my grandmother is a very good cook. She said she would come visit me one day in Puebla,” Rodriguez, who was also working as a musician at the time, told The Post.
“He thought I was just this flakey New Yorker,” Garcia joked of visiting Rodriguez in his home city on a whim in April, 2018. “A week later I got the tickets.”
That’s when his grandmother and aunt taught her how to cook dishes like Jalapenos stuffed with confit tuna — an item now on their menu.
“I had never been to Puebla – he [Rodriguez] basically showed me around. We went to this pyramid in Cholula. I slipped and he caught me. We just felt something – it was a movie moment,” Garcia recalled.
They had their first date in September, 2018 at Batard, the former Tribeca French restaurant where they “ordered every single thing on the menu,” Garcia recalled, finishing the meal with a Boulevardier cocktail and cheese.
Rodriguez briefly moved back to Mexico, but the pair continued to visit each other.
Back in New York, Garcia got a job working front of house at Eleven Madison Park in 2019, which involved 18-hour shifts on weekends. Garcia moved back months later, landing a gig at the contemporary Mexican restaurant Cosme in Flatiron as a busser and food runner after walking in without a resume.
They got engaged that year at Eleven Madison — but outside the restaurant.
“As soon as I got there they told me the table is not ready — I’m thinking something is wrong, we have a reservation. They said can you come outside and wait here … I turn around and he had this ring. I had no idea,” Garcia gushed.
They married in October, 2019 but months later they were furloughed during the pandemic. To make ends meet they started the supper club in Garcia’s apartment.
Then they hosted pop-ups in Bed-Stuy’s coffee shop Corto, and in the Catskills at Scribner’s Lodge before landing at spot at Smorgasburg food festival in 2023.
They used the money saved — and poured their life’s savings — to lease Cocina Consuelo, turning it into an all-day restaurant serving dulce de leche donuts in the morning and their signature birrira and aguachiles – a catch of the day similar to ceviche with chile – in the evenings, often with live music provided by local musicians.
And New Yorkers have been clamoring for a table.
“One of those places that deserves a Michelin star but hasn’t been discovered yet,” a diner praised in a five-star Yelp review.
“We’re hard working people following our dreams,” Garcia said of her full circle moment, having grown up in the neighborhood, where she and Rodriguez are now raising their daughter.
“We’re meant to be together.”