'HOPE' FOR A GREAT MEAL
Restaurants scarce, but their food tasty
The B train station at 174-175 Sts./Grand Concourse sits at the southern end of the Bronx neighborhood of Mount Hope, which is sliced into sections by steep hills and highways like the Grand Concourse. Restaurants here are few and far between, so those that thrive serve many purposes and people, not to mention three meals a day.
Salsa and a slice
Cristino Tigre (above right) has turned his little pizzeria into much more than a slice joint since he opened it 35 years ago. Though Tigres
Pizza’s dining room is not much more than a handsome wooden counter and a couple of stools, today it serves American breakfasts from 7 to 11 a.m., followed by Italian-American specialties and Mexican snack food.
Though the two pizza ovens are still given a daily workout, tacos, tortas, burritos, quesadillas, enchiladas, and other taqueria standards are now the heart of the operation. Like the deepfried flautas (above, a trio of tortillas filled with meat and showered with lettuce and crema, $10), everything is made to order and served with red and green salsas. (There’s also a special salsa made with smoky sweet chipotles, but you have to ask for it.) Tigres Pizza: 234 E. 174th St., near Weeks Ave., Bronx; (718) 466-3709
Crowd pleaser
On chilly days, the windows of Pollo
Sabroso Lechonera Dominicana are so steamy you can barely see the main attraction: the crisp-skinned roast chickens and whole pork shoulders that lure passersby from the sidewalk.
Those meats are one reason the tables here are full all day long — try the pork with plain white rice (below), red beans and a squeeze of lemon, $9 — but another is simply the quality of the homestyle Dominican cooking.
Everything here has its ardent fans, from the many Dominican-style stews with chicken, beef, goat, liver, or pig’s foot, to the $5 rectangles of cheesetopped pastelon. That’s the must-try Dominican/Puerto Rican casserole similar to lasagna, made with mashed sweet plantains instead of noodles.
Pollo Sabroso Lechonera Dominicana: 105 E. Mount Eden Ave., near Walton Ave., Bronx; (718) 294-4403