Cubano Research
Part I:
Tropicana Cuban
Restaurant
So these
next few food blogs entries (I’m not exactly sure how many there will be or the extent of
time it will take to finish the set…so yeah…) you’re going to have to blame the
movie Chef (what I’ve dubbed the food porn movie). I've
watched this movie about a dozen times and after each time, I crave a Cubano
sandwich. Until now, I've never actually gotten my lazy self up to do something about these cravings. So now, I've decided to do my own research into the subject matter of Cuban sandwiches and dishes. If you haven't watched this movie, obviously, I highly recommend it (even
if you're not a huge foodie, you'll probably enjoy it). The movie
can be found on NetFlix (no I didn't get paid to write that, in fact I don't get paid for any of these blogs).
Now I’m going to start with
this huge caveat, I’m not well versed in Cuban Cuisine. I mean, at, all. I’ve never had a Cuban sandwich, let alone
anything that is considered traditional Cuban (that I’m aware of). So with that being said, I do not have a
proper baseline for this blog, all I have are my subjective senses of smell and
taste. In other words, take this blog
with a grain of salt. If you have read
and somewhat agreed with most of my blogs then you’ll probably agree with me here. With that being said…here we go…
What is a Cuban or Cubano sandwich? Well
if you look it up in the Oxford dictionary, it states: “A type of submarine
sandwich, typically grilled, especially with ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese,
mustard and pickles.” What good ole
Oxford didn’t say is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; at
least from what I’m told, that's how it’s supposed to be.
Since
I was eating alone, I could only order and try so much from their menu, but I
decided on getting the appetizer sampler and of course, the main thing I was
craving, a Cuban sandwich. The prices
were very reasonable and my server was very nice and attentive when he wasn’t
busy with other tables (he was the only server for the entire restaurant).
Their menu:
Their menu:
The appetizer plate: “Includes a Cuban-style Tamal, Ham
Croquette, Stuffed Potato and Fried Yucca.”
To be perfectly honest I’m not quite sure which appetizer item was
which. I would have asked my server what
everything was, but since he was starting to get double and triple sat, I left
well enough alone. I am pretty positive
that I knew which the tamale was, the empanada and the rellena were, but I’m
not too sure about the rest.
The Tamale Cubanos was a decent
sized appetizer and it tasted like a Hispanic grandmother made it, so it was
very tasty, though I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this
Cuban tamal and a Mexican tamale. The masa
was soft and moist with just a hint of some salt and pepper. The boiled shredded pork inside the tamal
didn’t stand out, but it wasn’t bad either.
Actually this was probably the best part of the appetizer plate in my
opinion.
The beef empanada had a good
crispy outer shell around the outer edges, but the beef inside needed more
seasoning and was a bit greasy. To give
you an example, do you remember in junior high school on sloppy Joe day? And the amount of grease that drained out of
the slotted ladle the lunch lady used before placing the meat on the cold burger
bun? Well the beef inside reminded me of Sloppy Joes. Don’t get me wrong I like a
good sloppy Joe for nostalgic reasons, but not so much when it’s in an
empanada.
The Papa Rellena wasn’t
bad. The outside of the Rellena was
crispy and thin and the mashed potatoes were decent. Though just like the empanada and the pork
from the tamal, needed more seasoning.
(At this point, I began to think that traditional Cuban food was maybe
designed to be slightly bland so that whomever is eating can adjust to their
taste).
So the rest of the plate, I didn’t
exactly know what they were so, it probably wouldn’t be fair to give my opinion
of them. I could tell two were
plantains, but I didn’t know which was the tostones, which were the fried and
which were the croqueta de Jamon. The center of all of that was a type of garlic sauce. From what I could taste, it was a combination of some lime, lemon, vegetable oil, maybe a dash of cumin, some salt and pepper with some garlic. The sauce wasn't bad, but it did over power the subtle flavors of the ingredients, so I used it very sparingly.
Now
for what most of you have been waiting for, well at least I was when I ordered
it. The Cubano! Let's start with the bread. The bread was in house
made and toasted well. It had a
nice crunch and the inside was soft, glutinous and smooth. The cheese was gooey and complimented the (few)
pickles that were in the sandwich rather well...
Well there you have it folks, as you can probably tell, I was very disappointed with my first encounter with Cuban dishes, but maybe this was a fluke, maybe the flavors weren't brought out because the chef was having an off day or maybe the prep cook thought someone else had flavored the dishes already. I'm not sure, but this is the whole reason why I'm going to try other Cuban restaurants to see if this place was just an anomaly and I just happened to be unlucky with my first choice. Maybe it'll be like watching a movie first, before reading the novel, this way if you liked the movie, you'll like the book even more. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
So until next time...I bid y'all happy eating!
-Henry
