The menu was mainly Tex-Mex, with food that presaged that of modern places like Javelina, but at cheaper prices and with less pretense.
But patronage was not limited to families: There were students from nearby colleges, late-night diners, trashy cocktail fanciers, wandering Greenwich Village tourists, and area residents who didn’t want to travel very far for lunch or dinner. The waiters practiced a certain insouciance, but had hearts of gold and paid special attention to families with young children. And the tortilla soup wasn’t bad, either. The cheese enchiladas were a highlight of the menu. One booth commemorated actor Ernest Borgnine, for no discernible reason. Giant dinners were served on pastel Fiestaware plates at booths that seemed to have been haphazardly torn from some other establishment. Tortilla Flats’ name and décor suggested inspiration from Marfa, Texas, with tiny colored lights everywhere, pictures of Elvis, and lots of tinsel even though it wasn’t Christmas. There was Jamaican resort-inspired Sugar Reef, aquamarine-feeling Gulf Coast, and still-open Lone Star State-enthused Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Principally situated in Greenwich Village or the East Village, this new breed took a playful attitude toward international and American regional cuisines and decked themselves out with wall-to-wall kitsch to put the theme across. Tortilla Flats was a prominent example, though its location in the far West Village was obscure, one you had to go searching for. We might disparagingly call them theme restaurants, but they were much better than that term suggests. Suddenly, a new type appeared on the horizon. For decades, eating establishments had fallen into several ironclad categories: diner, fancy French restaurant, pizzeria, Chinese sit down or carryout, among them. In the 1980s, the restaurant industry in New York City was changing. Tortilla Flats represented a unique new form of restaurant when it opened in 1983 - one of many places that were once scattered across the Village but most of which have since closed.
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