My native-grown friend put it well: If this place had opened 20 years ago, its food would have been an afterthought at best.

Cabrito is a Caliente Cab Co. for the dining-conscious New York of this millennium, a Tortilla Flats for 2008. It’s done up in Mexican kitsch, with Day of the Dead skeletons, beautifully colored tiles, and margaritas flowing by the $60 pitcher. It’s a boutique version of a pastiche roadhouse, where gourmet details on the menu justify the prices — or try to: The margaritas are sweetened with agave syrup, the chorizo is made in-house, and the draft beers are Dos Equis and Brooklyn’s chic Six Point brew.

The menu, by David Schuttenberg, formerly of Fatty Crab, has a touch of multiple-personality disorder, offering handheld street snacks, such as a $5 tongue taco dripping with tomatillo salsa, side by side with delicate sashimi-esque nibbles of half-seared yellowtail piqued with creamy caper sauce and almond slivers ($14). The latter, a full-flavored pink fish that is brightly — if not very Mexican-ly — accented, is much tastier than the former, whose smallish pieces of braised tongue have less flavor and coarser texture than does lingua found in $2 taqueria tacos, with which one can’t help comparing them.

Cabrito’s other tacos stack up similarly, unimpressive next to their cheaper, more substantial counterparts around the city: one containing a mere sliver of batter-fried white fish draped in cabbage slaw ($6); one made with bland salt-dried beef ($5), even the one with crumbly “house-made” chorizo ($5), which tastes much like the store-bought stuff.

Stuffed jalapeños ($8) aren’t the familiar fried rellenos: These are fresh, fiery peppers simply slit open and filled with a fluffy mixture of cod and raisins. Frijoles puercos ($8), refried beans studded with thick chunks of bacon and chorizo, sounds like it’ll be anything but bland, but in fact it is, each chip-scooped mouthful monotonous and dry, like a diet version of the dish.

The restaurant takes its name from cabrito, a dish of slow-roasted baby goat that can be superbly flavorful. Here, a slab of the meat ($23) is served on a platter with a few warm tortillas and a bowl of salsa borracha, a dark, fruity, chutney-like salsa to which tequila gives a bitter note. The kid, seasoned with sour orange, is unusually tough, and its flavor is so dull as to be barely perceptible once salsa’s been applied.

If you want to pile loose meat on tortillas, a better bet is the carnitas platter ($16), whose layout is similar, but whose meat is a whopping pile of cubed slow-cooked fatty pork, rich with porky flavor, tangy with green salsa, and large enough to share.

Cemitas are sandwiches made on fluffy, firm sesame buns, onto the top half of which a glaze of white cheese is melted. Cabrito serves them with juicy, spicy pulled pork; chorizo, or its excellent charred, char-grilled skirt steak. Each is $12. The same fillings enliven big huaraches ($14), thick and chewy corn tortillas piled with lettuce and meat.

A variety of tequilas and mezcals is served, straight or in fruity cocktails. One pleasantly authentic touch is fresh watermelon juice, served in tiny $4 glasses. It’s luscious when the day’s melons are sweet, but woody and watery when they’re not. I was just in San Antonio, where $2 at a fruteria buys a Texan serving, a brimming half-gallon of impeccably fresh and refreshing melon juice. But this is the West Village.

One dessert is served — plump, yeasty fried churros with a dark chocolate dipping sauce. They’re good, but better is to walk to the corner and splurge on a $5 small cone of gelato at Grom, where flavors such as zabaglione and hazelnut are genuinely transporting.

The Mexican street fare at Cabrito is far more interesting than one would expect to find in such a youthful and earsplitting place. To Cabrito’s credit, the food invites comparison again and again, with similar dishes elsewhere. Unfortunately, for the most part, it isn’t strong enough to stand up to those studies.

Cabrito (50 Carmine St., between Bleecker and Bedford streets, 212-929-5050).