As Lime Prices Soar, Restaurants Ponder Changing Recipes

*There are some Latino dishes that can’t be imagined with out limes. In that sense, the rising cost of the fruit, above that of the Tequila in a Margarita, is indeed brutal. VL

By Andrew O’Reilly, Fox News Latino

Inside the rustic, lowly-lit Hecho en Dumbo restaurant, heaping plates of Conejo en Chileajo and Pescado a la Talla are served up to hungry customers sipping freshly-made margaritas at this chic Mexican eatery located in Manhattan’s Bowery neighborhood.

As cooks rush back and forth inside the open kitchen, braising pork and adding dashes of cilantro to short rib tacos, chef and co-owner Danny Mena mulls over the list of provisions that he needs to stock his freezer.

While one would think that Mena would be most concerned with the cost of the pricey cuts of the meat he has to order or the top-shelf liquor that sits behind the restaurant’s marble bar, the one food that is on his mind – and that of restaurateurs across the country – is a small citrus fruit that tops everything from tortas to tequila drinks: the lime.

“You take the good with the bad but this is getting brutal,” Mena toldFox News Latino. “The lime juice is now costing us more than the alcohol.”

The price of limes has sky-rocketed in the last few months thanks to a mix of damaging storms in prime growing regions in Mexico, the deadly “Huanglongbing” bacterial disease that devastated crops on both sides of the border and even the incursion of drug cartels into the Mexican citrus trade.

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[Photo by Troy Tolley/Flickr]