A Queens Bar Becomes a Beacon for Inspired Mexican American Food

There are bodega cats, there are bookstore cats, and then there’s Sabrina the restaurant jaguar.

Sabrina is the life-size faux (not taxidermied) feline perched atop a tree branch like the Cheshire Cat at the back of Hellbender restaurant in Ridgewood, Queens. She’s an apt spirit animal for this protean establishment and its chef, Yara Herrera.

Jaguars, in Mayan mythology, have the supernatural ability to go where they like, lords of the underworld who move lithely between light and dark, life and death, and in Sabrina’s case, brunch and last call.

It’s been open only 14 months, but Hellbender has already undergone all sorts of transitions. Ms. Herrera, who trained under Wolfgang Puck and David Chang, and her partners, who co-own the nearby restaurant Rolo’s, established Hellbender first as a lighthearted cocktail bar serving Mexican-inspired snacks. The food menu was cursory but compelling — fried Oaxacan cheese sticks and shrimp cocktail with Clamato, to accompany Hennessy piña coladas and Tajín-spiked strawberry margaritas shaken well into the wee hours.

When the partners noticed that food was outselling drinks, they expanded the dinner menu to showcase more of Ms. Herrera’s modern Mexican American cooking, which she had honed during the pandemic at Xilonen and various pop-ups. Last month, they added weekend brunch, a lure for both families with small children and night owls looking for a hair-of-the-dog michelada.