Pegboards, bright yellow pegboards covering nearly the entire north wall of the restaurant! Glimpsed through the taped windows about a week before the restaurant opened earlier this year, this rather unpromising view was our first peek at El Centro’s interior. HungryMan and I looked at each other, disbelieving. We didn’t expect the new restaurant to match its flashy predecessor, Vynl, glitterball for glitterball, sequin for sequin, but we had hoped at least for a little bit of flair. Fortunately, pegboards were a means to an end, and not the goal, as they’ve since been covered over with a museum exhibit’s worth of tin loteria gewgaws that give the restaurant a very quirky charm.

The food also tries to cultivate the same eccentric appeal, while still remaining as firmly Mexican as possible. For the most part, this is a good strategy, as Hell’s Kitchen (like most other neighborhoods in New York) already has several other plain Jane Mexican eateries: unremarkable both in design as well as food, which presents a perfect opportunity for a place like El Centro to fill a gaping hole in the market. And I wish I could report that this is what has happened.

But when Chopper, HungryMan, and I visited recently, we found lots of passably decent dishes–and we ordered quite a bit of food–with nary a standout in the bunch. Nothing we ate was bad, by any means, but none of it made us want to rush back to El Centro. We started with two shrimp dishes: the grilled shrimp pozole appetizer ($8) and the shrimp quesadilla with chipotle chiles ($8), and in both cases were underwhelmed by the spicing (too little of it) as well as the preparation (the pozole was undercooked, while the quesadilla was far too chewy).

Our entrées weren’t much of an improvement; HungryMan’s grilled chicken taco with molé negro ($5) arrived floating in an oil slick of molé sauce–far too much for the taco, but worse was that the shredded chicken pieces inside were dry and approaching tough. If there’s one dish that could be fixed with very little effort, it is this one: easing up on the sauce and keeping that chicken moist would improve this taco by leaps and bounds.

I ordered one of the evening’s specials: the grilled black bass taco with molé negro and mashed potatoes ($6), which did not have the same over-saucing issue as HungryMan’s dish, but which had a problem all its own–pasty, lukewarm mashed potatoes that sapped the heat out of the fish, leaving just a messy, mostly flavorless gloop inside the tortilla. As I ate, I wondered if I had accidentally requested the Bland Meal from St. Vincent’s Hospital down the street.

Chopper’s taco al pastor (braised pork, served with salsa verde, $5) had few glaring problems, but in the end, it also was not great: none of the ingredients, from the tortilla to the pulled pork, made much of an impression on us. When HungryMan tasted Chopper’s main dish, he said, “It’s OK, but I think it’s not much better than unnamed fast food tacos.” Nothing criminal, but food this mediocre left a lot to be desired.

For dessert, we ordered the chocolate chip cheesecake, as well as an order of the bunuelos–two fried discs of sweet dough topped with scoops of cinnamon ice cream. The cheesecake was decent and not very interesting, but the bunuelos came closest to being a hit, as they were surprisingly light and very well-paired with the cinnamon ice cream. I suspect the bunuelos weren’t fresh, however, as they weren’t even room temperature when they were served–barely melting the ice cream that sat atop them. But they did end our meal on a high(er) note.

Some other reviewers have remarked that El Centro is a good place to drink margaritas, nothing more. While I did think the frozen margarita I drank during dinner was great, I hope that El Centro isn’t going to settle for mere adequacy in its food, especially when its problems seem to be simple ones, problems that might be eliminated with a few hours of watchful kitchen supervision on the part of the management. After all, it would be a shame to fill Vynl’s old digs with a restaurant that amounts to little more than a margarita bar that just happens to serve food, and where the pegboard is the biggest attraction.

El Centro, 824 Ninth Avenue (at 54th Street), 646-763-6585

More photos of this meal are also available on our Flickr photostream.