Taqueria Diana has four locations throughout the city: Hell’s Kitchen, East Village, Williamsburg and LES. Known for serving their nachos on a metal sheet tray rather than a plate, they’re on Gothamist, Thrillist, and Foursquare’s “Best of…” lists.

Background
Visit Date and Time: Friday, June 22nd, 5:00pm
Nacho Style: Mexican Nachos
Price: $12.00 for just cheese; $14.50 with meat (we ordered carnitas). Guac is 75 cents extra.

Daisy had passed by the Williamsburg location on a recent trip to the cobbler and seen a platter of nachos served to a table of attractive millennials. They looked delicious! It was clear that Taqueria Diana would be our next stop.

Beers
Although we researched the location menus in advance, we did not plan appropriately for beverages. Only the Williamsburg and Hell’s Kitchen locations have full bars. Neither of us partook of the relatively meager beer selection at the LES location. Williamsburg has some delicious-looking and affordable cocktails.

Daisy: All I wanted was a margarita, which this location did not serve.
Emma: I also arrived very much looking forward to margaritas, only to discover that they weren’t available. The fact that I had several margaritas the previous day was immaterial.

The Bar
Size and ambiance vary by location.  The LES one is tiny, with a hole-in-the-wall vibe.

Ambience
There wasn’t much of one. Fluorescent-lit and very small.

Daisy’s Rating: 2/5. It got the job done, but I wouldn’t hang out here. Definitely a “finish your food and leave” type of place.
Emma’s Rating: 1.5/5. I’m not opposed to a hole-in-the-wall style when I’m grabbing tacos or a tamale, but I prefer a more leisurely environment when I’m enjoying a plate of nachos.

Beer
Other locations have a better selection, but this one had Corona and not much else.

Daisy’s Rating: 1. Corona is not my favorite. I had hoped to get the spicy margarita that I saw on the menu at the Williamsburg location, but it was not to be.
Emma’s Rating: .5. Not just because I was sad about the margaritas, but also because of the limited beer selection and the lack of my preferred styles.

Other Food
Taqueria Diana also serves non-nacho Mexican food, including tacos, burritos, and quesadillas.

Daisy’s Rating: 5. A+ menu. It left me wishing I had ordered a burrito instead of nachos.
Emma’s Rating: 3.5. I had some tacos at the Williamsburg location once while waiting for my boyfriend to finish reffing some dodgeball. They were solid tacos, and I’m sure the ones on the LES would have been just as good.

Seating:
A few two-tops in front, and a larger table in back. There’s also a bench on the sidewalk outside for the adventurous.

Daisy’s Rating: 2. We got a two-top in front. It did the trick! There wasn’t much seating overall, though, and I could see it being difficult to get a seat at more crowded times.
Emma’s Rating: 2. Very limited seating, but it gets a 2 because it wasn’t crowded. Again, not opposed to hole-in-the-wall vibes in general, just for nachos.

Overall Bar:
Feels more like a takeout place rather than somewhere to have a sit-down meal.

Daisy’s Rating: 2. Not to keep harping on this (and maybe I’m just crabby about my spicy margarita), but the Williamsburg location really won me over and I was hoping for a similar vibe at this one. I liked the menu, but I’d try a different location for future visits.
Emma’s Rating: 2. Agree with Daisy’s assessment. We picked the wrong location, and that’s on us, but we have to rate it how we see it.

The Nachos
An important note here: the list of nacho ingredients is slightly different on each location’s menu. Having never been to the other locations, we cannot confirm whether the nachos are actually different at each one.

Cheese
Real cheese–white cheddar.

Daisy’s Rating: 4. This review is a bit delayed, so I don’t remember the exact composition and flavor of the cheese here. That probably means it’s a solid 4. Definitely real cheese, thank God.
Emma’s Rating: 3.5. Real cheese well-melted, but a bit sparsely-applied for my taste. It was heavily concentrated on the central chips and didn’t quite make it to the outlying ones.

Toppings
White cheddar, crema, beans, salsa, pickled carrots and jalapeños. Guac 75 cents extra. We got carnitas as well.

Daisy’s Rating: 4. I tend to be more of a bar nachos person, but I was impressed with these toppings. Well-distributed, and the pickled jalapeños gave the whole thing a much-needed kick. The carnitas was quite heavy, though–I might get a meat-free platter were I to order these again.
Emma’s Rating: 3.5. I think the meat was overkill – it wasn’t as flavorful as I hoped and made the nachos heavier than they needed to be. The other toppings were fairly standard – nothing silly like olives, but nothing extra-delicious. I did like the spicy kick from the jalapeños.

Portion Size
Quite large, and they did indeed come out on a metal serving tray.

Daisy’s Rating: 5. Definitely filling. Almost too filling! I felt like I had a brick in my stomach afterwards (still vastly preferable to leaving hungry).
Emma’s Rating: 4.5. Nothing to complain about on the portion side. Half of this platter was more than enough for dinner.

Flavor
Daisy’s Rating: 3. I’m not sure if I was crabby about my margarita or too full from the carnitas, but these nachos didn’t stand out to me as much as I’d hoped. They were weirdly heavy, and after years of free guac at South’s I resent places that charge extra for it. I did like the pickled veggies on top though–unusual but delicious.
Emma’s Rating: 3. My opinion of these nachos is pretty similar to the Warren 77 ones. They checked all the boxes, and there was nothing wrong with them, but they still didn’t totally do it for me. I would definitely like to try them without carnitas to see if that improves my flavor opinion.

Overall Nachos

Daisy’s Rating: 4. I enjoyed these nachos, and my cranky, margarita-deprived mood at time of visit makes me inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. While they left me strangely full, that’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world.
Emma’s Rating: 3.25. We’ve now been to enough places that I’m trying to grade the nachos on a curve. For me these were towards the bottom of the “real cheese” range of the spectrum.

Summary
We definitely weren’t in a good nacho mood when we went to Taqueria Diana, and it may show in this review. We did enjoy the nachos, though, and may explore other locations in the future – especially if those locations have margaritas.

Bar: 2
Nachos: 3.63
Overall: 2.81

See you in August, when we return to Professor Thom’s to try the ten-person nacho platter!

Emma and Daisy