Honduras

The weekend started bad for the Culinary-Passport.  My first choice was going to be a repeat country but when I rolled into the parking lot there was a sign in the door that they were closed due to a power outage.  With this setback I had to get of my lazy behind and find someplace else.  OK I didn’t really get off my behind but I did some furious Googling, Binging & Yelping to find some restaurant that represented a country I hadn’t already done.  Success!  I found Restaurante Lempira which had Honduran food.  They have multiple locations in Charlotte and I opted for the one nearest me on South Boulevard.

I got there a bit after noon and the parking lot was already just about full so that was a good sign.  I walked in and immediately saw the clientele was heavily weighted towards the Latin American end of the scale.  Another good sign.  I was seated quickly and had my drink order taken immediately.  FYI they don’t do unsweet tea.  Since I didn’t know what I wanted in the first few seconds I suffered the one dip in service for the day.  The young lady who was supposed to be my server got involved in other things including an involved conversation with a coworker.

The standard chips & salsa were delivered rapido.   The salsa was a little thicker than some with chunky bits of onion and cilantro and a bit of heat. I munched on those sparingly since my intended entrée looked like it was going to be a good deal of food.  My order was eventually taken by a different lady that had an air of authority and a different uniform so I’m guessing she was a boss of some sort.

The menu has a lot of different options from the standard Mexican American fare to items from other Central / South American countries weighted just a bit in favor of Honduras.  I went with the Platillo Hondureño.  Boy was I right it was a gracious plenty.

Let’s start from the bottom left and work our way up.  We have cubed grilled steak that was lightly seasoned so you got the full taste of the beef and it was very tender.  The yucca was just a filling starch and didn’t have much flavor and by itself would have needed salt but in concert with either of the meats was just fine.  The next row had pico de gallo, cabbage salad and an avocado, onion and vinegar combo.  All of these were good in their own right and a nice way to add a little something to the meats.  The back row had an empanada and what they called fried pork skin.  The Honduran empanada was filled with a ground meat and rice combo with a few stray bits of other vegetable matter.  It was deep fried and deeply fried and didn’t have a lot of flavor of it’s own, at least not compared to the other foods.  The fried pork skin was an unexpected surprise.  I expected something akin to crackling or fried fatback and while this was definitely close it was at least 80% meat.  Now it was fried to within an inch of its life which kept the fat from being…well, fatty. There were a couple of wedges of lime to squeeze on whatever you thought needed lime.

There was easily enough food for two here and I called uncle and dropped the fork before this plate was clean.  The food was good, the price reasonable and the supervisory lady checked in on me several times during the meal so aside from the one hiccup the service was good.  I’d definitely eat here again.

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