Santo Taco

Steak trompo at the center

The steak trompo gives Santiago Perez, chef at Santo Taco in Manhattan, a fixed point for the kitchen: sliced beef, tortilla, salsa, and the quick discipline of the hand. Perez calls the restaurant his first solo project in New York City, and his most personal one yet, with Mexico City-style tacos set at the crossroads of SoHo and Nolita. The language is plain because the format is plain. A taco does not leave much room for disguise.

Before this counter, Perez worked as a partner at Casamata hospitality group. That part of his path matters here less as résumé than as muscle memory: how a restaurant moves, how a small team holds pace, how a concept stays legible when the room fills. Santo Taco follows that experience into a narrower frame. The project carries his Mexico City upbringing through the shape of the food rather than through decoration or explanation. The taco is the measure, and Perez keeps returning to it.

A Mexico City form in New York hands

The kitchen’s stated direction is Mexico City-style tacos, and the steak trompo is the clearest signature. It is built for concentration: meat cut thin, seasoned directly, folded into a fresh tortilla, then handed across before the heat leaves it. Carne asada, chicken, zucchini, carnitas, chips, guacamole, pickled onions, chicharrones, and sauces appear around that center, but the house reads through the same grammar of tortilla, filling, acid, and heat.

Nothing here asks to be treated as a tasting menu in miniature. The craft sits in proportion and timing. A taco leaves the bench with only a few decisions visible, which means each one has to be right enough to stand close to the guest. Perez’s own description of the project keeps the method grounded in style and place: Mexico City as the reference, SoHo and Nolita as the daily pressure, Manhattan as the pace.

The counter between SoHo and Nolita

At 114 Kenmare St, the room works like a city taco counter rather than a long dining room. Guests move between the counter, indoor tables, outdoor seats, and the sauce bar; the food keeps to a short distance from the pass. The observed texture is practical: tortillas landing quickly, salsa choices made by the guest, pickled onions and chicharrones added at the side, another portion ordered when the first one has done its work.

That nearness suits Perez’s first solo project. Santo Taco does not need a large room to state its point of view; it needs the repeatable gesture of steak trompo, tortilla, and sauce, made at the tempo of Kenmare Street. The close thing to follow is not an abstract expansion, but the way Perez keeps sharpening the same form at Santo Taco.