Flavor Central
CENTROAMERICANA is near and dear to Latin-minded diners.
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Though they're from Cuba and Guatemala, respectively, Maribel Pezon and Roger
Santiago have focus-ed on dishes from Nicaragua to make CENTROAMERICANA a
Metairie favorite.
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WHAT: Centroamericana
CUISNE: Nicaraguan
WHEN: Lunch and early dinner daily
WHERE: 3507 Hessmer Ave., Metairie 455-7722
CARDS: Major
We are on Veterans Memorial Boulevard, headed in the direction of a Nicaraguan
restaurant on Hessmer Avenue. It's just 11:30 a.m., and I am only slightly
hungry. I need some stimulant to ready my belly for the hearty meal I'm about
to take in, so I sniff the air when I drive past the dozens of restaurants
along this stretch: Japanese, Chinese, Italian.
To make the diverse scents waft a wee longer, I take the scenic --
rather, the fragrant -- route: turning right on Severn Avenue to pass a Middle
Eastern restaurant, then hanging a left on 18th Street to pass a place cooking
up Korean fare.
I look over at my friend Asante.
"Metairie always smells so good right around this area," I say.
"You smell that?"
"I don't smell a thing," she says sourly. "I'm too hungry to
smell."
I turn left on Hessmer and pull into the tiny parking lot of
Centroamericana, where the owner, Roger Santiago, is getting ready to deliver
40 meals.
"Busy today," he says.
Inside, we greet two friends -- Pat and V. Pat introduced me to
this spot a year ago, and I fell in love with the place, its smoky red beans
and rice, fat and fresh plantains, lemony salad, thick and cold passion fruit
juices.
Oh, and its moderate prices.
I mull over the menu, trying desperately not to order my same-old,
same-old, but my mouth watering for it anyway. Pat orders her favorite: sopa de
res (beef soup with white corn tortillas). "I ordered this yesterday," she says
sheepishly.
"That's all you're getting?" the rest of us want to know.
"It's huge -- you'll see," she warns.
V gets my usual dish: pollo a la parrilla, which includes
charbroiled chicken, rice and beans, salad and plantains. In Spanish (V is from
Cuba), the waiter tells her she can get the plantains sweet and softly fried or
salty and crispy, and that she can get her beans and rice separate or mixed.
Asante orders charbroiled lomo de cerdo asado (tenderloin pork).
But first, an appetizer: chorizo con huevo, a finely grated egg and sausage mix
with rice, and tortillas and salsa on the side. For $3.50, it's almost as big
as a meal.
When Pat's soup arrives, everyone gasps. The bowl is humongous.
Inside, soaking in a light broth, are big chunks of beef, yuca, carrots,
cabbage, corn (on cobs) and mirliton. The aroma is titillating.
As for me, well, I order my usual, but I am happy. I get my beans
and rice mixed together, which, in Spanish, is referred to as "gallo pinto." V
says, "Literally translated, that means `rooster with spots.'"
The delivery of food to the tables is prompt. Chef Maribel Pezon,
Santiago's wife, moves like lightning in the kitchen, chopping jalapenos and
throwing them in a skillet, zipping by a girl slicing beef, yanking vegetables
from inside the refrigerator.
"I've been cooking since I was 12," she says. "I started cooking
for my brothers and sisters. I made meals of yuca, pork ... ."
She grew up in Cuba and moved to Metairie five years ago. She
quickly learned to cook Nicaraguan cuisine, the only dishes the restaurant
serves. Paprika, lemon pepper and cayenne are key spices.
Santiago, who moved from his native Guatemala to Metairie in
1983, bought the Central American restaurant in 1996. It had been open for a
few years and the owner wanted to sell it.
"We kept the name, but we changed the menu some," Santiago says.
"It's a small place, but people who know about us bring a couple of friends,
then those friends bring a couple of friends. That's why I'm still alive."
Santiago says his favorite dish is the shrimp in jalapeno sauce,
which he can wash down with any of the imported beers or the 10 types of fresh
juices sitting in the restaurant's cooler.
"We get the produce from Miami, which they get from Central
America, shipped to here," he says. One day, he promises, "I will have a bigger
place, more customers."
For the here and now, he wants to know if we enjoyed our food.
"Yes, yes," we say as we file out, stomachs stretched.
But he needn't have asked. You can't find a bean anywhere on my
plate. Patricia's bowl holds only a bunch of clean bones. V, who claimed she
wasn't hungry because she'd had a breakfast of thick grits and two eggs, left
but a few morsels of plantains on her plate.
And Asante, who made no secret of the depth of her hunger, is now
smiling, carrying a takeout box of her leftover pork tenderloin and making
jokes: "Oink, oink."
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