On Menus, the Ticket Is Nuevo Latino
By ERIC ASIMOV
NEW YORK -- For years, trend-spotters have trotted out the same old prediction:
South
American food will be the Next Big Thing in New York restaurants. It's
a sleeping giant, they
would say, coming
any day now. Any day.
Well, look around
you. From the basket of steaming arepas that arrives with the menu at Orinoco,
a new Venezuelan
restaurant on the Upper East Side, to the grilled Argentine skirt steak
served at
Ideya in SoHo,
the next big thing is finally here.
In the last year,
restaurants offering South American and Latin American foods have opened
all over
Manhattan, engulfing
diners in an avalanche of enticingly poetic terms like chimichurri, sancocho
and
parrilla (which,
for the uninitiated, are a tangy Argentine herb sauce, a soupy stew and
mixed
grill). Some
of these new restaurants specialize in the food of a single country, like
Cuba, Brazil or
Argentina. But
most are selling hybrid cuisines, calling their restaurants pan-Latin or
even pan-American,
combining the
foods not just of South and Central America but of North America and the
Caribbean, too.
The southward
trend, which began slowly a couple of years ago with several Brazilian
rodizios and
Argentine steakhouses,
has surged ahead in the last few months, with the opening of restaurants
like
Orinoco and
Ideya as well as Campo, Casa and L-Ray in Greenwich Village, Bolivar on
the Upper
East Side and
Calle Ocho on the Upper West Side.
"I was disappointed
that it took so long, but to see it happen like this is very exciting,"
said Douglas
Rodriguez, the
chef and owner of Patria, the pioneering nuevo Latino restaurant on Park
Avenue
South. Rodriguez's
reinterpretations of Latin American dishes have made him something of a
godfather of
contemporary Latin American cooking.
Restaurants eager
to jump on the pan-Latin express are now peppering Rodriguez with calls
for help
in finding chefs
who are familiar with the idiom, which can vary tremendously from the
European-derived
cuisine of Argentina to Peru's pre-Columbian emphasis on corn, grains and
seafood to Brazil's
unique African-Portuguese-Caribbean blend.
The demand for
Latin American ingredients has shot up, too. "Oh yeah," said Vito Latilla,
a vice
president of
the Manhattan Fruit Exchange, a leading wholesale produce purveyor. "Yuca,
plantains,
tomatillos,
it goes on unbelievably. From years back it's tripled. Now everybody is
buying yuca and
jicama and all
the related items."
The truth, of
course, is that South and Central American restaurants have always existed
in New
York City. Strolling
the streets of Jackson Heights or Corona in Queens is like a trip to the
Andes,
with extended
families sitting down at neighborhood Argentine spots like El Gauchito
for huge
platters of
ribs, sausages, beef hearts and sweetbreads, or at Tierras Colombianas
for a huge, thin
steak, served
with a fried egg on top and puffy fried pork skin on the side. On certain
summer
weekends, you
can even find grilled cuy, a prize Ecuadorean specialty otherwise known
as guinea
pig.
You will not
find beef hearts, fried eggs or guinea pigs at the new Manhattan restaurants,
though you
will find cocktails
and colorful tropical drinks galore. These are not uncertain nooks opened
by
recent immigrants
offering a warm bit of home, but carefully considered, well-financed businesses
opened by restaurateurs
schooled in the intricacies of the Manhattan market. Some of the new
places, in fact,
have simply dislodged restaurants whose once-trendy concepts have waned.
The Santo Family
Group, for example, replaced the aging Arizona 206 with Bolivar after deciding
that "comida
pan-americana," as they call it, was a concept better suited to the Bloomingdale's
neighborhood
than a 16-year-old Southwestern formula. On Broadway near New York University,
Ashley Smith,
an owner of the popular East Village restaurants Opaline and Radio Perfecto,
was
brought in to
reconstitute Bayamo, a Chinese-Latin fixture past its heyday, as Bayamo
Nuevo,
offering Cuban
food presented, as Smith says, "so it's user-friendly and exciting, but
respectful of
Cuban traditions."
On Columbus Avenue,
where the restaurant Main Street once dished up family-style platters of
meatloaf and
mashed potatoes, there is now a stylish new pan-Latin restaurant, Calle
Ocho, where
yuca and malanga
are the tubers of choice. While some of these ingredients may sound unfamiliar
to
Upper West Siders,
the menu places them in context, describing bistec with fried yuca, for
example,
as "Cuban-style
steak frites."
Calle Ocho's
four owners, Jeff Kadish, Spencer Rothschild, Steve Scher and Paul Zweben,
had
previously succeeded
with two Rain restaurants, which follow a pan-Asian formula, and with the
upscale fusion
restaurant Union Pacific. They were seeking a jump-start for Main Street
when they
latched on to
the pan-Latin theme. "We always want to be in the forefront of new tastes
and
restaurants,"
Rothschild said.
To take charge
of the kitchen, they hired Alex Garcia, who had been a sous-chef at Patria.
Garcia,
perhaps anticipating
the pan-Latin wave a little too early, had made the leap with his own pan-Latin
restaurant,
Erizo Latino, three years ago, but the restaurant closed in early 1998.
Now, he says,
after some initial concern over how his food would be received on the Upper
West Side,
he is beginning
to relax. "This is doing great," he said. "They are really ready for it."
With dishes like
lobster ceviche, duck with calabaza squash and orange salsa, and Peruvian
shrimp
chowder with
achiote oil, Garcia's menu is a creative blend in which new ingredients
and techniques act
as garnishes
for the comforting and the familiar. Offerings like Dominican seafood stew
and rum-glazed
shrimp are delicious
but hardly challenging to norteamericanos.
"What's going
to work on the Upper West Side?" Rothschild asked. "We didn't put in the
pulled pork
dishes, the
heavy stews, the dishes with lots of beans."
In truth, few
of these restaurants pretend to offer authentic cuisines. Lard and palm
oil, used
copiously in
South America, are replaced with olive oil, just as the range of organ
meats is
represented
by the occasional sweetbread. The menu at Bolivar, for example, is heavy
on grilled
meat, familiar
fish and hearty soups, occasionally with exotic adornments. "Sushi-grade"
tuna is
served with
a yuca crust. Mussels are steamed in corn beer, an ancient Peruvian beverage,
while
sauteed foie
gras is served on an arepa.
"A lot of our
menu is South American steakhouse," said Andrew D'Amico, the executive
chef at
Bolivar. "A
lot I would describe as South American comfort food. We have interesting
things on the
menu, but it's
not a stretch."
The clear, direct
flavors and the emphasis on simplicity are part of the appeal of the pan-Latin
restaurants,
which generally take pains to set themselves apart from the more complex
nuevo Latino
formulations
of Rodriguez at Patria.
At Campo on Greenwich
Avenue, Steven Picker, the owner and chef, offers what he calls "country
cuisine of the
Americas." He fuses some of the ingredients of South and Central America
with the
techniques and
sensibilities of North America to produce dishes like mildly spiced cod,
steamed in a
banana leaf
and served with sweet coconut rice.
"It's a backlash
to opulent eating," he said. "There's something about Latin America in
the American
psyche that
feels homespun, that feels of the earth. Americans feel it's approachable.
It's rustic,
hearty and generous."
Anya von Bremzen,
the author of "Fiesta: A Celebration of Latin Hospitality" (Doubleday,
1997),
said the fascination
with pan-Latin food is part of a wider social interest in Latin and South
America.
She likened
the surge in restaurants to the rise of Latin music. "Salsa went from the
expression of
Puerto Ricans
living in the barrio to this highly engineered, slick production, and I
see the same thing
happening with
food," she said.
Tamar Kuznick,
an owner of Ideya in SoHo, sees rise in interest in Latin music and New
York night
life as crucial
to the rise of the pan-Latin restaurants. "In the last two or three years,
it seems that all
the different
clubs and lounges in New York City were doing salsa nights," she said.
"I felt there was
a train taking
off, and I wanted to jump on it."
Argentine steakhouses
in New York, like Pampa and Chimichurri Grill in Manhattan and Sur in
Carroll Gardens,
Brooklyn, have been wildly popular, but does the heavily meat-oriented
Argentine
cuisine, derived
largely from European settlers, have any relation to, say, the pre-Columbian
foods of
Peru? Is the
term pan-Latin any more meaningful than pan-European?
"The basic thing
that ties the cuisines together is the language, but they also share ingredients,"
Rodriguez said,
and Ms. Von Bremzen agreed, adding that combining the cuisines may be a
marketing necessity.
"I think the
individual cuisines might lack the sex appeal to elevate them from the
hole in the wall,"
she said.
Don't tell that
to Tom Atkinson and Miriam Cordoba of Orinoco, which opened in mid-December
on the Upper
East Side. While Orinoco bills itself as offering the cuisine of South
America, its
concentration
is on Venezuela, where Ms. Cordoba grew up. Ms. Cordoba, who was a sous-chef
under Garcia
at Erizo Latino, had been working at Pacifico, a seafood restaurant that
was one of
several places
that Atkinson and a partner own. Business at Pacifico was slow, except
at Sunday
brunch, when
the owners allowed Ms. Cordoba to put together a Venezuelan menu. "We figured
we
were on to something,"
Atkinson said. So they closed Pacifico and opened Orinoco.
With dishes on
its menu like fried green plantains with stewed salt cod, and venison stew
with
eggplant and
potatoes, Ms. Cordoba makes less of an effort than some other places to
tailor her
food to North
Americans. Yet she presents her food with art and style. "My food is not
nuevo
Latino," she
said emphatically. "It is typical regional food from Venezuela."
For Ms. Kuznick,
who is half Brazilian, and her partner in Ideya, Lauren Small, who grew
up in
Miami, their
menu is "a contemporary interpretation of Latin American food."
And what does
that mean? ''We make it less fattening," she said. Her menu, put together
with
Ideya's chef,
Christopher Rios, includes dishes like roasted chicken with chorizo hash
and whipped
yuca, and cocoa-cinnamon
dusted breast of duck with stuffed plantains and a poblano-red wine
sauce.
Whether these
restaurants will become long-term fixtures or simply flavors of the month,
New
Yorkers have
clearly widened their appetites in the last year. And the ingredients themselves
may be
the restaurants'
most important legacy.
"We're letting
everybody know what malanga is, what ceviche is," said Garcia of Calle
Ocho. "I
don't know if
all the restaurants will stay, but the ingredients will stick."
Here are some
of the pan-Latin and South American restaurants that have opened in New
York in
the last year
or so, along with six that serve classic South American cuisine. All are
informal and
most are moderately
priced, with main courses costing $10 to $20.
Bayamo Nuevo,
704 Broadway (East Fourth Street), (212) 475-5151. The longtime
Latin-Chinese
hybrid has been reconstituted as a strictly Cuban restaurant.
Bolivar, 206
East 60th Street, (212) 838-0440. A large and seductive menu, a little
more
expensive than
the others, featuring soups, stews and ceviches, and plenty of steaks and
chops.
Calle Ocho, 446
Columbus Avenue (81st Street), (212) 873-5025. A handsome, atmospheric
dining room
with a sophisticated pan-Latin menu.
Campo, 89 Greenwich
Avenue (West 12th Street), (212) 691-8080. A pleasant, relaxed restaurant
with rural decor,
serving an excellent breakfast as well as dinner.
Casa, 72 Bedford
Street (Commerce Street), (212) 366-9410. A small, friendly restaurant
that
offers Brazilian
country food.
Chimichurri Grill,
606 Ninth Avenue (43rd Street), (212) 586-8655. A small Argentine restaurant
specializing
in empanadas, fish and especially beef.
Ideya, 349 West
Broadway (Broome Street), (212) 625-1441. SoHo style (and prices) embrace
a
creative pan-Latin
menu.
L-Ray, 64 West
10th Street, (212) 505-7777. A loud and lively bar and restaurant that
serves
what it calls
"Gulf Rim cuisine." The chef is Aaron Sanchez, son of Zarela Martinez of
Zarela.
Mosaico, 175
Madison Avenue (33d Street), (212) 213-4700. Well-executed pan-Latin food
to
go. An easy
way to dip into the cuisine.
Orinoco, 1484
Second Avenue (78th Street), (212) 717-2204. A sedate South American
restaurant specializing
in Venezuelan cuisine.
Pampa, 768 Amsterdam
Avenue (98th Street), (212) 865-2929. Busy, loud but modest Argentine
steak house.
Sonora, 222 East
39th Street, (212) 297-0280. Manhattan-style pan-Latin, where malanga and
mojito sauce
coexist with foie gras and red-wine reductions.
Sur, 232 Smith
Street (Butler and Douglass Streets), Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; (718)
875-1716.
A new Argentine
restaurant where the focus, naturally, is on meat.
These six restaurants are more reminiscent of South America than they are of New York City:
Coco Roco, 392
Fifth Avenue (Sixth Street), Park Slope, Brooklyn; (718) 965-3376. Authentic
foods of Peru,
including a selection of ceviches, excellent roasted chicken and grilled
snapper and
terrific canchas,
roasted corn kernels that were a snack of the Incas.
18 de Julio,
77-05 37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens, (718) 429-5495. Like Argentina,
Uruguay is a
carnivore's paradise, and this grill and butcher shop will satisfy any
craving for beef.
El Gauchito,
94-60 Corona Avenue (94th Street), Corona, Queens, (718) 271-8198. A tiny
storefront Argentine
restaurant and butcher shop where the most popular dish is the mixed grill,
which includes
skirt steak, sausages, sweetbreads and beef hearts.
La Portena, 74-25
37th Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens, (718) 458-8111. This Argentine grill
is
popular and
packed. Besides steaks and grilled meats, there is an entire Italian menu,
reflecting
another side
of Argentina's heritage.
Rinconcito Peruano,
803 Ninth Avenue (53d Street), Clinton, (212) 333-5685. This small
newcomer offers
Manhattanites a taste authentic Peruvian dishes like papas a la huancaina,
or boiled
potatoes with
spicy cheese sauce. Much of the menu is only available on weekends.
Tierras Colombianas,
82-18 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens, (718) 426-8868. A
bright, efficient
and friendly Colombian restaurant serving huge platters of perfectly fried
red snapper
or grilled pork
loin suffused with garlic, served cassava, yuca and, of course, rice and
beans.