D I N I N G
FROM ABALONE TO ZABAGLIONE
DOWN CUBA WAY
Havana Mania cooks up a tasty storm
BY MERRILL SCHINDLER RESTAURANT CRITIC
Where Los Angeles has a Mexican restaurant on virtually every corner, the ethnic equivalent in New York City is the huge number of Cuban eateries.
There have long been fabled spots like Victor's on the Upper West Side. But those who know the scene well also speak glowingly of Bayamo down in the Village, La Caridad on Broadway and Saber on Cornelia Street.
There are dozens of tiny Cuban/Chinese places serving a culinary mix that sounds wholly outlandish and tastes remarkably good. In the same way that there are few Mexican places in Sew York, there are only a handful of Cuban restaurants in Los Angeles. But unlike the Mexican eateries of New York, which are just awful, our Cuban places are pretty darned good. And remarkably affordable. Until Castro goes away, this is as close to Havana as most of us will ever get. In Southern California, the dominant Cuban restaurant is Versailles. It's impossible to write about Cuban cooking in Los Angeles without mentioning the obsessive cult following that flocks to the four branches of Versailles (including one in Manhattan Beach) for the garlic chicken. I've eaten there dozens of times. And like most everyone else, it's the garlic chicken I order. And it was the garlic chicken I ordered as well at the latest challenger to arise for the title of top Cuban eatery in Southern California.
It's called Havana Mania, and it sits in a mini-mall just off the Inglewood exit of the San Diego Freeway It's a surprisingly pleasant place, and a lot quieter and more sedate than Versailles (although Cuban places are never all that sedate; there's always a Ricky Ricardo vibe in the air.
In the usual Cuban restaurant style, the chicken (Pollo Asado) is available as both a quarter and a half order, though the quarter looks more like half a chicken, and the half looks a lot like three-quarters or maybe seven-eighths.
It's a very good chicken, tender and sweet, rich with garlic and lemon, the sort of dish you eat more like dessert than like an entree. Which is to say, you can’t stop eating the thing? It's so good, you'll probably start chewing the bones.
One could stop with the chicken, as at Versailles, and I have no doubt that many do. Recognizing this, Havana Mania offers a quarter chicken, plus roast pork (Lechon Asado) combination, a plate that's the best of both worlds.
You get chicken, along with the dish that most Cubans would describe as their national dish, more than chicken, the Cuban dish of choice is pork, long cooked with lemon and garlic, until it's virtually just shreds. And so gooooood!
There are more chicken dishes, including the classic Arroz con Pollo (chicken with rice yellowed with turmeric), chicken fricassee long cooked with tomatoes, olives, onions and potatoes and chicken Saltado (boneless chicken long cooked with onions, tomatoes and peppers).
The only other pork dish aside from the Lechon Asado is Masas de Puerco Fritas, which is fried rather than roasted, served in chunks rather than shreds. It’s pork with bite, a cousin of the wildly crunchy Chicharrones.
The Cuban penchant for long cooking, much like Jewish cuisine, results in a number of beef dishes that are, in the Yiddish phrase, gedempte well cooked.
Ropa Vieja ("old clothes") is very much gedempte, a dish where the beef is stewed till all sinews begin to break down.
The result is a dish, to paraphrase Mr. Jim’s BBQ, for which you don’t need no teeth.
Just as tender is the Cuban pot roast (Boliche Asado),the stewed oxtail (Rabo Encendido), and the sautéed lamb (served on weekends). The Picadillo is tender by definition ground beef cooked with Creole sauce and olives.
For those in need of seafood (though some of it should be ordered in advance) there’s the paella and the zarzuela, which take between 20 and 45 minutes.
Somewhat simpler is the yellow rice with shrimp, the shrimp in garlic sauce or green sauce and the marvelous Cuban-style fried rice, tossed with chicken, pork, shrimp, scallions and bean sprouts. It’s a taste of Cuban-Chinese cooking in Southern California.
The two classic Cuban sandwiches are available as well: the sandwich Cubano and the media Noche sandwich. Both are made with ham, pork, cheese, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise the difference is in the bread and the size.
For dessert, there’s flan, along with guava, coconut and the cake called Tres Leche.
And there’s an assortment of Cuban soft drinks: Materva, Jupina, Malta and Iron Beer, which tend to be pretty strong brews. They like their flavors strong down Havana way. |
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