When we first moved to Lower Manhattan a decade ago, it was extremely hard to find a family friendly restaurant that wasn’t considered fast food, but wasn’t overly expensive. We definitely had to venture above Chambers Street into TriBeCa or to the West Village and Chelsea for family friendly choices. Fast-forward ten years and we have a shopping and restaurant boom in downtown New York City and it’ll be extremely hard for our family to venture anywhere north of Chambers Street.
Enter El Vez, a family friendly restaurant in Battery Park City on Vesey Street. It’s in a perfect location, right near Rockefeller Park and Battery Park City ball fields, so after an afternoon in the playground, just scoot on over to El Vez for a casual, yet modern Mexican-American meal. They have stroller parking, a kids menu, outdoor seating and a spacious indoor dining area – just perfect for families.
El Vez was gracious enough to host my family so we can check out this new family friendly restaurant. We started off with their guacamole and chips, which they made to our specifications since we had the kids (super mild with the hot salsa on the side). It was plentiful and ridiculously delicious. The girls had a big choice of food from their $8 kids menu that has choices from the traditional (chicken fingers and hot dogs) to the Mexican traditional (quesadillas) to the different (mahi mahi bites and peanut butter and banana sandwich). The kids meals comes with sides such as fruit salad, rice & beans, tortilla chips and grilled corn. Hint: get the grilled corn. The girls ate it all up.
The Hubby and I enjoyed the Tacos al Carbon for two with skirt steak and shrimp. It came with grilled vegetables so that we can build our own tacos with rajas, onions, queso fresco, guacamole, crema, salsa roja and warm flour tortillas. We were full, but there’s always room for dessert….
We easily could have had all six of their desserts, but we held back. We decided on the cinnamon & sugar dusted churros with Mexican chocolate dipping sauce (and you should too, if you know what’s good for you) and the daily selection of sorbet (coconut, guava and grapefruit) which were all refreshing and balanced out the churros.
Service was extremely good; it was one of those places where your drinks were always refilled and our napkins always folded. Our waiter, Miguel, was very knowledgable about what we ordered and told us about each of our entrees and the sauces that it came with.
The whole meal cost just under $100 for all four of us which included a couple of beers and sodas, which we thought was a good deal for what we received. El Vez is definitely going to be a regular restaurant for our family.