Chef Spotlight >Mexican Radio

Broadcasting in Hudson
By Pauline Uchmanowicz . Photos by Patricia Decker

The revitalization of Hudson has proved a boon for the restaurant trade. While coffee shops, diners, and bars have been mainstays for years, newer establishments include a lunch spot called Earth Foods Cafe (catering to natural/organic types) and the bohemian-chic bistro Red Dot, the name harkening back to Hudson’s heyday as a red-light district.

Another recent contender, Mexican Radio, opened for business this past June. Operated by Manhattan restaurateurs Lori Selden and Mark Young, Mexican Radio is the third store by that name the couple has owned. Trained as a musician and an actor respectively, they launched their first eatery in 1995 after inheriting a tiny space on Mulberry and Prince Streets in Little Italy. “We missed foods we’d grown to love while living on the West Coast,” Selden relays, sitting in the downstairs dining room of their Hudson location. “So with a tremendous amount of naiveté we said, ‘Let’s open a Mexican restaurant.’ As far as training, we knew nada, learning on the fly big-time.”

But the name of the place did relate to Selden’s experience as one-time owner of Revolver Records in San Francisco. “It’s the title of a song by an LA new-wave band called Wall of Voodoo,” the dark-haired, dark-eyed señora says. The origin of the term “Mexican radio” harkens back to the 1950s when rock-n-roll was prohibited in the United States. Disc jockey Wolfman Jack crossed the border just south of LA to play the outlaw music on AM Mexican radio stations, out of the reach of the FCC but with enough watts to broadcast to North America in the middle of the night.

Pitching their theme somewhere between high-end über Mexican cuisine and chain restaurants like Chi-Chi’s, they hoped to attract an artsy, East Village clientele through simple decor, warm colors, and lots of candles. “We wanted to have great margaritas—that was a big focus—but also comfort food,” she states. From the start they have offered traditional favorites, such as burritos and chimichangas, developing recipes over time to encompass daily specials, typically including a fish catch-of-the-day. All food items are prepared each day from fresh ingredients; similar standards hold for their drinks. “Our first bar was tiny, without room for both well and premium liquor, so we’ve used premium liquor, fresh lime juices, and fruit purees—never mixes—right from day one at each of our locations,” she says.

The original restaurant instantly hit with the pierced-and-tattooed crowd, but eventually demand left the owners searching for a bigger place. At the same time, they had discovered Columbia County, “before the New York Times did,” claims Selden, and were renting in Spencerville. “People upstate, when they asked what we did, always said, ‘Oh please open a place up here!’” They nearly did so in Chatham, but just before closing the deal a former disco became available around the corner from the Mulberry Street address on Cleveland Place in Manhattan. Taking it over, they completely gutted and overhauled the interior, recreating the former restaurant on a bigger scale. “We coasted along pretty well, but then 9/11 hit.”

They bought a permanent residence in Stuyvesant in the fall of 2001 and revived the search for an upstate-restaurant location. “We liked what was happening in Hudson and knew it had potential for a great lunch business, which we wanted to serve since we do prep all-day long, beginning at 7AM.” They also wanted to create a niche that would unite longtime residents and newcomers (sometimes called “city-its” by old guard Hudsonians). To that end, Mexican Radio employs 40 local workers and has relied on area retailers for building supplies and art objects.

The layout of Mexican Radio in Hudson resembles the long shape of the current New York City location. Featuring two downstairs dining rooms, a long bar, and an upstairs balcony with additional seating, it extends and improves upon many of the design elements from Cleveland Place. In planning the interior, Selden aimed for a Mexican-country “distressed” look, using 17th- and 18-century barn wood throughout. Custom-made oak-top tables burnished in deep burgundy tones accent the character, as do wide hardwood floors made from Douglas fir. Crucifixes and antique objects made to resemble altars hang from the mellow orange walls. Candles ($2,000-a-month’s worth) illuminate holders mounted on or lining the walls, many honoring the Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico. Faux-Mexican tiles painted in a diagonal pattern ascend on the staircase to the second floor while the genuine tiles in the bathrooms complete the ambiance. “That’s what I’ve always loved most about Mexican food and culture—it’s never perfect,” says Selden. “The atmosphere is warm, the religion earthy. The Mexican way of life is about creating a shrine and putting a tortilla in front of it.”

Dining at Mexican Radio, my companion and I started with a shrimp quesadillas appetizer; a standout item stuffed with goat cheese and caramelized peppers and onions, it arrived grilled to perfection and drizzled with sweet pepper sauce. For main courses we sampled chile relleños—roasted poblano peppers lightly egg-battered, stuffed with cheese, pan sautéed, and served on a bed of roasted tomato-jalapeño salsa; and triple enchiladas mole, tasting three differently flavored tortillas and sauces, inspired by chocolate, raisin, almond, raspberry chipotle, and spicy verde (pumpkin seeds). To enrich the rice and beans accompanying our entrées, we doused from bottles of designer hot sauces, which rest on every table.

From the ample list of Radio Margaritas we chose the Short Wave, made with the liquor Citronge. The bar features over 20 specialty tequilas—from Cazadores reposado to Monte Alban mescal. Similar to beer-garden samplers, Mexican Radio runs a weekly tequila-tasting special, allowing patrons to taste-test a few brands at a time. Other house specialties include sangria, Spanish wines, and cerveza, including Corona, Pacifico, and—my personal favorite—Tecate in a can.

In addition to running a fun, upbeat, quality restaurant, Lori Selden and Mark Young wish to help improve the reputation of the town. “Hudson is still on the upswing,” says Selden. “We’re trying to start a business alliance to help market Hudson, but we want to do it respectfully without ignoring old timers or the disenfranchised among us. We want to help the community but also earn a living.” For their part, Mexican Radio recently sponsored Hispanic Poster Month at the Hudson Middle School, awarding free lunch to 22 who participated. “For the most part, people here have been embracing,” Selden concludes. “Hudson was a good choice for us.”

MEXICAN RADIO
537 WARREN STREET, HUDSON. (518) 828-7770.
OPEN DAILY 11:30AM ~ 11PM.