cuba cafe in covington is closed already!

i am so mad, i have been dying to go to cuba cafe which just opened a couple months ago and i read about here and here and here and here. and it is already closed! in its place is a new restaurant called caribbean cafe.

i just went for lunch with rickell and we walk into the restaurant and we are like "do you have cuban sandwiches?" and the woman was like, "no." and i said, "well we really want a cuban, where is cuba cafe?" and she goes, "this is not it." and then she made me take a menu and acted really offended that we did not want to stay. we thought we were at the wrong place but we went down the street into an office and asked them and they said cuba cafe had closed, and caribbean cafe had replaced it. and then we were so annoyed that the woman just didn't tell us that information that we went to riverside instead. and that was delicious.

rickell and i are like the biggest fans of the cuban sandwich in the entire city and so we are totally upset. if anyone has any tips on a) where we can find a truly authentic cuban and b) what the hell happened to cuba cafe, please let me know.

general latino food shout out

polly campbell wrote an awesome article in today's enquirer about all the great places to get latino food in the cincinnati area. you guys should check it out. and don't forget the cincy cinco festival this sunday on fountain square (the article was written to coincide with that). i went last year and there was a ridiculous number of delicious foods available, and i think fountain square will be a much better location than riverbend. and on sunday parking is free on the street downtown. cheap + delicious, i can't argue with that.

is anyone still out there?

sorry for my miserable lack of posts lately. i'm not dead, just super busy and exhausted. i spent the weekend in detroit for the final four, where i watched my spartans kick uconn's ass on saturday only to get completely, embarrassingly destroyed by the tarheels on monday.

my awesome friend lavine got us last minute tickets on ebay and we had what i can really only describe as by far the most amazing sports event experience of my life. watching my team play in the final four in our home state? unbelievable. this even beats the time we snuck an entire pollo campero fried chicken dinner for four (for the two of us) into the us open and gnawed on drumsticks and plantains while watching roger federer kick everyone's ass.

this was one of the best nights of my entire life. yes we were in the nosebleeds.

the game on saturday night was beyond description. the energy in ford field was amazing, 2/3 of the 72,000+ fans were there for the spartans and we were all loud as hell. i screamed so much that i lost my voice and got lightheaded. it was so much fun. monday was another story but at least we made it to the championship game!

my metro detroit food highlights of the weekend:

• lou's deli in southfield. get the counterman's treat: "Corned beef, Swiss cheese, cole slaw, Russian dressing on an onion roll." you can thank me in cash. i accept paypal.
• the breakfast club in farmington. get anything. it's all awesome. go for the tomatoes au gratin as a side. yummo! (sorry, that just slipped out. i promise it will never happen again.)
• vicente's cuban cuisine downtown. best cuban sandwich outside of miami (other than zingerman's although, to be fair, vicente's is more authentic). maduros that are so perfect you just marvel at them. amazing cuban food in detroit? yes my friends, the dream is now a reality.
• la marsa mediterranean cuisine in farmington hills. the detroit area la shish restaurants used to serve the best hummus i ever tasted in my life and chicken with this dipping sauce that was literally crack mixed with garlic. for years they were having problems with tax fraud and then rumor spread that they were sending money to terrorists in lebanon. thousands and thousands of metro detroit residents ignored the problems and continued to pour their hard earned dollars directly into funding al qaeda simply because they could not live without this hummus. then la shish got shut down in 2008 and the city mourned. but no worries, the food carries on at la marsa, which somehow got its hands on all the la shish recipes.
  
• jamaican curry, rice and peas, coleslaw, and lemon cake cooked by lavine and cindy and my mom's roast rosemary chicken. good luck finding that, suckas!
  

it was an awesome food and sports weekend. however, i barely slept. we drank bottle after bottle of wine, talked 24-7, and went to bed no earlier than 2 am every night. i also visited my family and tried to keep up with work email/voicemail. so it was crazy.

then i got back to work on wednesday and the shit was hitting the fan all over the place. hence no time to blog. i promise i will do better. don't leave me, readers!

boca chica

boca chica was one of the major food highlights of my three years in new york. my friend mary ellen first introduced me to it during my first couple of months in the city and i became an instant regular. every time i go back, i have to eat there.

so what exactly is this miraculous place? boca chica is a small, perpetually crowded latin american restaurant in the east village. the nytimes describes it much more succinctly than i ever could:

Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic are just some of the countries whose cuisines are juxtaposed on the enticing menu of this little pan-Latin restaurant. Top choices include camarones chipotle, shrimp in a tomato, chili and cilantro sauce; crisp, tangy chicharrones de pollo, the classic Dominican dish of chicken pieces marinated in lime, soy and spices; and sweet plantains stuffed with ground beef picadillo. Service is sometimes slow when the boisterous dining room is filled.

i just love this damn place. we always go on a saturday night at like 8 pm so that means we always have to wait at least an hour. but we just bum around at the bar and sip the best mojitos of my life and we do not have a care in the world. (tip: go for the mojitos and avoid the caipirinhas like the plague). we always want to try the sangria but that would mean wasting precious mojito-allocated stomach space, so we never do.

the atmosphere

once you are finally seated, they hook you up right away with long, crispy plantain chips and a black bean dip that is infused with crack. i am serious. i do not understand what is in this dip (and trust me, i have tried countless times at home to figure it out to no avail), but it is utterly addictive. it is the best fucking black bean dip you have ever eaten.

as you are fighting with your tablemates for the last scrapings of dip, you peruse the menu. you start to wonder if maybe you had one too many mojitos because... can this place really be that cheap? or are you just blurry eyed and fuzzy brained after all that rum? no, my friend, you are seeing things correctly... all the entrees, and i mean every single one, including specials, are under $20. and, in fact, most of them are under $15. and we ain't talking a la carte here. no, every entree comes with rice, a cabbage/lime/tomato/onion slaw, and either black beans or mashed yams. i challenge you to clean your plate.

the food

because i love it sooooo much, i almost always get the moqueca de peixe, a rich coconut cream and curry based stew with chunks of fish, huge shrimp, peppers, onions, and general deliciousness. it is the shit. i am not normally a one dish kind of girl at most restaurants... i like to sample all the things on the menu. however, this dish is so insanely good that i can almost never pass it up.

i have tried other things in the past and they have all been amazing. one of my particular favorites, which fortunately comes in appetizer form as well (which means i can have my beef and eat it too), are the piniones. these are sweet maduros formed somehow into a round shape and stuffed with juicy, spicy, very well seasoned ground beef. it's a sweet-and-salty lover's dream. soooo good. i always make people let me try what they order there, and i am convinced that you truly cannot go wrong.

the atmosphere is fun and busy. it's darkly lit, with colored christmas lights, exposed brick walls, mirrors decorated with a listing of the specials of the day, and fun mexican loteria paintings. the place is always jam packed like i said, so it is kind of loud, but after a couple mojitos it won't bother you. one thing: they will ask you to leave if there's a wait and you're lingering at your table. but with such amazing food at such low prices, you don't even mind.