Amid the influx of Mexico City-based restaurants coming into New York City, see: Taquería El Califa de León and Tacos Domingo; and now, there’s a new collaboration on the horizon: Bed-Stuy Mexican restaurant Olmo is expanding with a new all-day taqueria
and cafe, with Mexico City cafe and bar Cicatriz, this late summer. Peral is opening right next door to Olmo at 105 Saratoga Avenue, near Decatur Street, on Wednesday, September 2.
Peral will be more casual, serving tacos — many of which are guisados — with an eye towards vegetarian and vegan options.
Peral’s co-owners include Cicatriz co-owners and siblings chef Scarlett Lindeman and beverage director Jake Lindeman; chef Filipe Neves; and the Olmo ownership team. (Disclosure: Scarlett Lindeman has written for Eater before.) There’s also Olmo chef de cuisine Miguel Mendez, who has the same role at Peral.
The Lindeman siblings are from the tristate area: she was born in New York City, and he in New Jersey, but Scarlett Lindeman was drawn to studying Mexican cultures and cuisines because of summer jobs working in restaurant kitchens. She got her master’s degree in food studies at New York University, followed by her PhD in sociology at CUNY Graduate Center. That’s when she wrote her dissertation on exploring the differences in Mexican cuisine across American cities, including New York, and she herself lived in Mexico City. Afterwards, she decided to open Cicatriz with her brother in 2017, a restaurant known for its natural wines and fried chicken sandwiches.
Scarlett Lindeman had already worked with one of the Olmo owners to open her second now-closed Mexico City restaurant, Ojo Rojo Diner. TThe space next door to Olmo became available, and it just made sense to take it over for something new but related. “This is like a little bit of a homecoming for me,” she tells Eater. “I never really considered being involved in any project in New York City, but the stars aligned.” While the Lindemans will continue to be based in Mexico City, they’ll travel back and forth to New York.
Of Peral, Scarlett Lindeman says, “This is a return in some ways to an indigenous Mexican diet — which was not vegetarian by any means, super omnivorous eating lots of insects and wild game — but tons of vegetables, mushrooms, chiles, wild greens, flowers.That has a natural place in the discourse that nobody really talks about, or people just automatically think it’s all meat and cheese, which is delicious too, but there’s a lot of amazing dishes in the Mexican tradition that are vegetarian.”
Peral‘s name is “pear tree” in Spanish, and Olmo’s means “elm.” Lindeman references a Mexican saying invoking the trees: “No le pidas una pera a un olmo,” which translates to “Don’t ask an elm tree for a pear.”
The menu will include a list of tacos with either corn or flour tortillas, with a heavy emphasis on guisados. Of the corn options: Peral’s take on the classic chile relleno ($6) uses a dried green ancho pepper that gets rehydrated with piloncillo and vinegar, stuffed with Oaxaca cheese, seared on a plancha, and then chopped up into the corn tortilla. “It becomes this deeply savory but kind of sweet unexpected chile relleno ancho,” Lindeman says it’s her favorite item on the menu. The quelites ($6) are made with seasonal braised wild greens, which can range from alaches to, for an American spin, collard greens.
Meats include seared rib-eyes with jalapeño escabeche ($8) on flour tortillas; chicken Milanesa with creamy guaca-salsa and papa paja (matchstick-cut potatoes) on corn; and goat birria in a cheese-crusted flour tortilla ($8).
For drinks, under Jake Lindeman’s purview, there are Mexican drinks like a frozen Carajillo Peral ($15) made with sweet condensed milk; a draft El Cuauhtémoc, with an aged Oaxaca rum, bourbon, vermouth, and ancho chiles; and $12 El Verde michalada is made with a mess of green juices — cucumbers, serrano peppers, and cilantro, with fish sauce and beer.
Desserts include the pastel imposible ($9), aka chocofla, and the sweet quesadilla ($5) made with a guava ate (fruit paste) and Oaxaca cheese (a favorite of Scarlett’s). The champola ($6), a Merida-style sundae with a roasted banana ice cream and cold corn tortilla-infused milk. “
Because in Merida, it’s very hot and it’s like a milkshake before it’s shaken,” she says. “You eat it out of a sundae glass with a spoon, and you get pockets of cold milk and pockets of ice cream, and you mix it as you go.”
Peral’s daytime hours feature coffee made using Intelligentsia beans as well as teas and drinks including a horchata cold brew ($6) and lattes ($7); matcha lattes with hibiscus jelly ($9); the iced Peral Fizz ($7), an espresso tonic with prickly pear syrup; and the Arnoldo Palmero ($6), an iced black tea with tepache They’re sourcing sourdough conchas and tamales from Sunnyside bakery Masa Madre.
The firm behind Olmo, Studio Woodman designed the 1,200-square-foot space, which fits 55 people indoors. It includes arched hallways, a skylight, lots of plants, furniture by Tomo Objects, and a takeout window. Outside, artist Alannah Farrell extends her mural at Olmo of an elm tree onto Peral’s wall, featuring a pear tree.
Olmo opened in June 2025, with a Mexico City-styled food menu. The restaurant received a Michelin Bib Gourmand later that same year. Cicatriz opened in 2017, becoming known for its vegetarian-friendly dishes and a great cocktail program. In fact, for Olmo’s first day, Cicatriz had a pop-up at the restaurant.
Peral will start with cafe hours from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. with pastries, tamales, and coffee on weekdays, and then 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends. Dinner hours are from 5 to 10 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. The team will add fuller breakfast and lunch services with burritos later.
