Mr. Aguilar has been frying, blending and stirring mole de Piaxtla since Casa Enrique opened in 2012, just off Vernon Boulevard, in Long Island City, Queens. In fact, he has barely changed his menu since our Hungry City critic, Ligaya Mishan, reviewed it the next year. Mr. Aguilar says he is emulating the restaurants he likes best in Mexico, ones whose kitchens make the same dishes year in and year out.

Whether despite this or because of it, the restaurant seems to have improved in subtle ways. Acoustic panels tacked to the ceiling make conversation easier. Servers, always welcoming, have become experts at anticipating the meal’s ebb and flow. They’ll step in just when you’re ready for a fresh drink, maybe a margarita with some tamarind this time to offset the raw-sugar syrup. They’ll gauge the precise moment when you’re ready to have dinner plates cleared to make room for dessert.

Or they’ll break away from your table just long enough to join in a full-throated singing of “Happy Birthday” around a slice of tres leches cake with a candle stuck in it on the other side of the room. This may happen three or four times a night, probably not because Casa Enrique looks particularly festive — from floor to ceiling, it’s done almost entirely in white — but, I’d guess, because regulars know it regularly outperforms any number of other restaurants that might seem to be more special on the surface but aren’t, really. Also, the tres leches cake, if not as soggy with condensed milk as it could be, is still pretty good, though I think the flan is almost mandatory, and it, too, is a perfectly credible birthday-candle holder.

Although the guacamole is freshly mashed and pleasingly minimalist, I tend to skip it as long as the people I’m with don’t mind. Instead I’ll head straight for the two-bite sopecitos topped with refried beans and loose chorizo, or the albondigas in cumin-laced chipotle sauce, each of the three meatballs stuffed with hard-cooked eggs.