Signature Dish: Pachanga Patterson

Welcome to the Q’Stoner food feature, Signature Dish! Once a week we check in with Queens restaurants and ask the owners about the all-time favorite dishes they serve. If you know of a dish you’d like to see featured here, please email emily@brownstoner.com.

The Spot: Pachanga Patterson, 33-17 31st Avenue, Astoria.

The Deal: Pachanga Patterson isn’t just another Mexican restaurant. Sure, the dishes on the menu will be familiar, but the owner and Chef Peyton Powell have taken care to put their own spin using local ingredients. “Being influenced by traditional dishes and putting our spin on them by blending the seasonal farmer’s market produce of NYC, while not having your everyday American Mexican menu,” Powell says. “Since we’ve opened here in Astoria, there has been an influx of ‘New Age Mexican’ restaurants opening in NYC; we believe we differ by concentrating in the true flavors of Mexico’s rich food culture by introducing exotic ingredients and incorporating them in a casual seasonal restaurant in Queens.”

The ever-changing menu highlights the seasonal produce combined with new recipes Powell brings back from his frequent trips to Mexico.

The Dish: Cochinita Pibil could be described on another Mexican restaurant’s menu as a pork taco. At Panchanga Patterson, the pork taco borrows an ancient Mayan recipe for cooking pigs – the cochinita. The traditional preparation in the Yucatan peninsula is served with tortillas or on a torta with pickled habanero onions.

“Our spin includes pickled cabbage and habanero onions along with a creamy garlic honey aioli which we feel takes this taco to the next level,” Powell says.

Other dishes on the menu, such as the tamarind-glazed pork belly, combine traditional Mexican flavors – the tamarind – with New York-local produce – Long Island purple cauliflower.

Travel, experimenting, and experience allows Chef Powell to combine local and exotic flavors to create a taste that can’t be found at another Mexican restaurant.