Photo by: B.A. Nilsson

Comprende
By B.A. Nilsson

Mexican Radio
537 Warren St., Hudson, 828-7770. Serving daily 11:30-11. AE, MC, V.
Cuisine: Mexican fusion
Entrée price range: $11 (huevos rancheros) to $18 (Cajun burrito)
Ambiance: cheerful cantina
Clientele: NYC escapees

Here’s what I did for starters, and I recommend it. I ordered a serving of salsa and chips ($3.50)—and don’t get me wrong, the salsa is homemade and cilantro-centric—and lined up the six bottles of hot sauce. You’ll find a variety of them as part of your table setting, and I believe six is the norm, although I may have borrowed a bottle or two from an adjacent table.

I applied a dollop of each on a corn chip, and away I went, allowing each sauce to fully occupy my palate before taking a sip of my margarita and moving to the next. They ranged from fiery to beyond inferno, with enough individual flavor to require a second trip around the block. And then a third. Which takes its toll on a margarita.

Because Mexican Radio aims to please a broad-based clientele, the kitchen doesn’t fire up the heat in the menu items. Owner Lori Selden assured me that her own preference would be for a higher temperature, so the many sauces (which also are available for sale) are a compromise. Fine with me.

The Hudson branch of this Manhattan-based eatery opened a little over a year ago, after a year spent refurbishing a former antique shop. “It’s a re-creation of what we have in New York,” says Selden, whose location on Cleveland Place long has been highly acclaimed. “We thought about opening in Hudson for years. We’ve been coming up here for a long time, renting a place at first and then buying our own house three years ago.”

She’s a musician, and her husband, Mark Young, is an actor. Why a Mexican restaurant? “He grew up in San Francisco, and I lived there for years. When we moved to the East Coast, we missed the kind of Mexican restaurant we liked there. So we decided to open our own.”

Although we have ever-greater access to Mexican restaurants, as a culture we have no general sense of the legacy of this cuisine and thus find it difficult to assess the authenticity. Certainly what’s out there is of varying quality.

Mexican Radio starts with an authentic approach, but paints it with local color in the form of fresh ingredients and an innovative approach. The triple enchiladas mole ($17), for example, gives you a choice of any or all of the distinctive toppings, each flavored with unsweetened chocolate: raspberry chipotle, giving a berry-based sweetness to smoked jalapenos; a pumpkin seed-based one and the house mole, which adds raisins and almonds. Fillings include cheese, vegetables, chicken or beef.

Obviously, you’re paying more than you might elsewhere for enchiladas, but this isn’t the dish you’re getting elsewhere. The same holds true for the burritos ($15-$18), which are too-generously sized and teeming with flavor. The fillings, as described for the enchiladas, are treated as more than the usual afterthought, and also can include spicy shrimp, chopped plantains and perky chorizo.

I sampled an appetizer plate of the chorizo ($10) and was impressed not only by the sausage itself but also the added flavor of the wine and beer in which its simmered. It’s not something to spring lightly on unaccustomed friends, or at least on your mother-in-law if she’s anything like mine. One bite and she looked as if a traffic accident had occurred just south of her tongue. My daughter tried the chorizo and loved it. This is the contrast between one who relies on McDonald’s fare and one who doesn’t.

Because Selden herself is a vegetarian, Mexican Radio is an excellent source for meatless cuisine. The Three Crispy Tacos ($15) are a large version of what you’d expect, with a choice of fillings. Even when they’re taken solely on the veggie route you get a fine array of flavors, helped by the sauces of pico de gallo and a tomatillo salsa.

A side dish of beans is also bidirectional. Black beans keep you on the vegetarian path; pintos don’t.

Appetizers run from chips and salsa on up to a fancy Radio Roll-Up ($12), which is practically an entrée and gives you roasted veggies, beans and cheese in a deep-fried flour tortilla. I like the culture clash in Mexican spring rolls ($9), stuffing corn and mushrooms, peppers and guacamole into a wrapper that’s fried and served with a raspberry chipotle peanut sauce. You read that correctly.

The guac is great ($9 as an appetizer) and there’s even a Mexican fondue ($9) that invites you to dip tortilla chips into a Dos Equis-moistened hot cheese sauce.

Huevos rancheros ($11) as an entrée? Why not? For that matter, why not wrap Cajun-spiced shrimp in a burrito ($18)? It’s part of the approach immortalized in the Wall of Voodoo song, itself a tribute to a time when the most creative mix of music was coming to us from south of the border.

There’s much, much more to the menu—including some pricey but excellent desserts—and the restaurant itself is a cheerful, comfortable, multilevel spot for anything from cocktails to full-blown dining. I’m not much of a mixed-drinks guy, but the cheerful service, the creative jumble of decor (love all those candles!) and the hot sauce with chips made that margarita about as welcoming as a drink can be.

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