Cuba

After a short hiatus for some vacation time at the beach, to quote a famous Cuban “Lucy, I’m home!”

This week I dusted off the old Culinary Passport and took a trip to Cuba via A Piece of Havana on S. Tryon in Charlotte and wow was that a good choice.

Nice place sitting by itself at one end of a shopping strip.  The interior has some Cuban paraphernalia and a big flag hanging from the ceiling.  The furnishings are dark like a club rather than a breezy tropical place which probably works well since they have live music on the weekend evenings.  It was basically empty when I arrived so I was greeted and seated quickly and the waiter had my tea at the table in a flash.  He also asked if I had any questions about the menu and patiently provided answers to the few I had.  But enough of the set up, let’s talk food.

Because I’m a good blogger and willing to make sacrifices for my readers I started with the small empanada appetizer as seen below.  They were only $2 and a great size for an appetizer.  Inside was a tasty ground meat filling and as you can see it came with pico de gallo and another dipping sauce that was ok but I liked the empanadas just fine plain.  What you don’t see is they were freshly cooked and smoking hot.

Next up was the crispy beef with rice and beans plus plantains.  I’m going to say this was my favorite meal all week and I had a Trumplet earlier this week (it’s an omelette that’s been politicized).

Let’s go from left to right.  The rice and black beans I could have made a meal of just by themselves.  They were obviously cooked together and not just beans dumped on rice and stirred together.  They also had a wee bit of fatty salt pork cooked with them which warms any born and bred Southerner’s heart.  I’m not sure what seasonings they had but they were very good.  Now the crispy beef.  As you can see it was topped with grilled onions and a chimichurri sauce.  The marinated meat is cooked until tender then shredded and cooked again until it starts getting crispy.  I don’t know what exactly was in the marinade but the flavors were subtle and quite tasty.  Finally we get to the plantains.  They were my least favorite, not because they were bad but because the other two were just so good.  They were also the sweetest plantains I’ve ever had and I think that threw me as well.  Good but unexpected.

I washed the meal down with jupina, a pineapple soda.  Not too sweet and although it was slightly artificial the pineapple flavor was good and went well with the meal.  For mojito fans they had a list of 10-15 different types of mojitos and some of them looked interesting.  My plan was to finish off with a Cuban coffee but there was just so much meal I didn’t have room.  I’ll have to skip the emanadas and save room for the coffee next time and there will be a next time.

You can link to the restaurant by clicking the name above and don’t forget to check out the Tell Me More page for a crispy beef recipe and a great video of street musicians in Cuba as well as the usual random fact and Amazon top results for Cuba.