Three for the Weekend, February 28

Enchiladas, diner fare, and more

Puebla Mexican Food is stall #50 at the Essex Market

A weekly column that appears every Friday. In it, I suggest fun dining spots worth devoting your leisure time to on the weekend. Places recently opened get special emphasis, as do long-forgotten chestnuts that are still superb. Many places feature corollary attractions, such as hikes, museums, eminent architecture, and neighborhoods distinguished by their unique feel.

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Travel to the Lower East Side for a traditional market

This weekend is a good time to revisit the Essex Market, which you’ll remember moved across the street from its Mayor LaGuardia-era concrete bunker into a cold real estate development. The ground floor became a combination of retail food stands, with some quirky establishments of generally high quality. But the greedy real estate developers, hoping to capitalize on the fame of the original Essex Market, put a competing food court in the basement. Like many food courts these days, it has gone belly up — my personal theory was that it was partly because of a dungeon-like quality, but also because of the dauntingly long stairway one went down and up to get there.

Like all food courts, upstairs is struggling, too, and empty stalls appear here and there, which makes for a certain gothic quality. But shining like a beacon in a rear corner is Puebla Mexican Food, dedicated to the southern Mexican state cuisine NYC first fell in love with in the 1990s.

Picadillo enchiladas with tomatillo salsa