It was not so cold last night, but tonight it's snowing and thundering as you hunch down the avenue. Mercadito Cantina is warm, and when the fog clears on your glasses, you move to sit at the bar. The front of the restaurant is furnished with long, high tables and stools; there are a few low tables and proper chairs in the back. Decor is minimalist: place settings comprise fork, spoon and napkin on a tiny glass plate. You order a beer and some tacos. Your barmates sip tequila cocktails and complain about PATH service. Later they will sing a little song about chem lab safety.

Two tacos are assembled in the kitchen, a small hot space squeezed behind the bar. One cook tosses a pan of carnitas under the salamander as another pulls up a plate and readies a squirt bottle of sauce. Four minutes later dinner arrives. The tortillas are tender and subtly sweet, topped with a mess of pulled pork and peanut salsa. They are very good.

This review was supposed to be anonymous, but in a couple minutes you've already told the bartender and given her the web address. She asks if you're in the 'business' and you say that you wait tables. She gets you another beer and speaks about her only valued possession, a betta fish named Mark. When you compliment the playlist she says oh it's just Pandora. She makes you a cocktail with grapefruit jarritos and then, almost too soon, she makes you another. You're buzzing when you get up and head back out to the snow.