How Karina Garcia of Cocina Consuelo Threw Her Own Birthday Party

On a cold night in February, the restaurant Cocina Consuelo in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan was, as it always is on Mondays, closed, but its tiny kitchen was a swirl of activity. “Of course I’m cooking on my birthday and my day off!” said the chef Karina Garcia as she assembled a strawberry tres leches cake topped with meringue and a flurry of fresh chamomile, mint, basil and dill for the friends and family who’d gathered to celebrate with her.

The evening marked not just Garcia’s 32nd birthday but also the six-month anniversary of the restaurant, which she opened with her husband, Lalo Rodriguez, 37, after parlaying a pandemic-era business selling tacos on Instagram into a supper club at their apartment a few blocks away. In a city where the success of a new business often hinges on publicity campaigns and TikTok kismet, Cocina Consuelo — named after Rodriguez’s maternal grandmother — has landed atop several best-of lists solely based on word of mouth. “We didn’t even have that strong a social media presence,” Garcia said. “I’m not sure how anyone heard of us.”

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Harlem, she met Rodriguez — a native of Mexico who came to New York to study jazz guitar — when they worked together at a now-shuttered Upper East Side restaurant, she as a captain and he as a busboy. When she asked if she could join him on a trip back home to Puebla to try his grandmother’s cooking, she fell in love, both with the man and the cuisine he grew up eating. Today her food reflects that homemade Mexican sensibility, whether she’s serving it to diners at the restaurant or, as on this occasion, co-workers and family.