The dining public’s desire for authenticity and more robust flavors is driving the popularity of Latin American street food from its south-of-the-border origins northward and across the country.
Whether it’s a mainstream restaurant branching into new culinary territory or a food truck pushing the limits of what “Latin American” and “street food” mean, the flavors — and perhaps even more so the notion — of food from Central and South America and nearby islands are finding a welcome acceptance with North American palates.
“With taquerias and taco trucks emerging everywhere, tacos have become an American staple,” said Richard Sandoval, head of Richard Sandoval Restaurants, which operates 15 restaurants in the United States and the Middle East. “Now, we’re seeing deeper explorations into other Latin cuisines, specifically Peruvian, with ceviches and causas on more menus.”
A causa is a Peruvian dish of stuffed mashed potatoes flavored with chiles and lime juice and served cold with avocado and some kind of protein.
“We serve a causa with smoked swordfish and purple potato, and in another causa we combine tuna ceviche and yellow potato. Our customers have responded — so much so that we’re developing a special Peru- Nippon menu for our Latin-Asian Zengo restaurants this fall.”
Venezuelan cuisine is the focus of Pica Pica Maize Kitchen, which has two locations, in San Francisco and Napa, Calif.
However, “we’ve taken a little poetic license,” said owner Adriana López Vermut.
The restaurant specializes in arepas, cakes of cooked cornmeal that López Vermut tops with such classic mixtures as deviled ham and cheese, or beef with beans and plantains, or such not-so-classic choices as arugula salad.
“When I tell people from Venezuela that they can have an arepa with tofu, avocado and plantain, they say, ‘No way you can do that,’ but it appeals to the American market,” she said.
Chiles do, too. So although Venezuelan food is not typically spicy, López Vermut has adjusted to meet customers’ expectations with mixtures such as spicy black beans with seasoned tomatoes, onions, cilantro and guasacaca — a Venezuelan avocado sauce made with vinegar and garlic.
A number of higher-end restaurants also are playing with Latin American street food: The word “taco” now appears on 11 percent of the menus of 1,000 independent “innovators” tracked by research firm Datassential, up from 5 percent in 2006.
At Seviche, an upscale restaurant in Louisville, Ky., chef Anthony Lamas is currently serving a mahi mahi taco that he marinates with achiote, lime, garlic and chile. He grills it and serves it on two tortillas with cabbage, cumin-lime aïoli and yellow pico de gallo.
“Your fish taco with a twist, so to speak,” he said.
He also serves arepas topped with roasted duck or pork, or shrimp in lemon-Pernod butter. He grills a variety of anticuchos, Peruvian meat skewers.
“It’s always fun to eat something on a skewer,” said Timothy Spinner, executive chef of Cantina Feliz in Fort Washington, Pa., explaining the success of his beef alambres, which is hanger steak marinated with parsley, raw garlic and a blend of olive and other vegetable oils. It’s skewered and grilled with cippolini onions and poblano peppers and served alongside what he calls borracho beans, which are pinto beans simmered in beer with smoked bacon and Serrano chiles.
But a runaway hit, and perhaps a surprise one, has been his Elotes Loco, or “crazy corn,” which is a side dish of grilled corn on the cob served with mayonnaise, queso fresco and chile salt. As Mexican street food it’s served on skewers, but Spinner presents it on a plate on braided corn husks.
Like Lamas at Seviche, Greg Hardesty, chef of Room Four in Indianapolis, likes to use upscale protein in street food, but which one he uses depends on what he’s cooking at Recess, Room Four’s sister restaurant that serves farm-to-table cuisine. The leftovers and trim — still great meat, but “not necessarily the center cut that looks good on the center of the plate,” Hardesty said — are served up at Room Four.
Recently, that meant duck-breast tacos. For that dish he scored the duck skin and rendered it to crisp it up. Then, he chopped the meat and skin and cooked it to order with salsa roja and a little avocado.
Hardesty said he calls Room Four’s fare a “staff meal on steroids,” because it reminds him of all the staff meals made with leftovers that end up tasting better than anything on the menu.
For Mary Sue Milliken, co-owner with Susan Feniger of Los Angeles’ Border Grill, her restaurant’s two taco trucks needed to serve food that wasn’t claiming to compete culinarily with “all the fabulous ranchero carnitas trucks” that ply that city’s streets.
So Milliken created new menu items, including fried avocado tacos, which are wedges of the fruit coated with seeds such as amaranth, quinoa and black and white sesame seeds, deep-fried to order and served in corn tortillas.
For dessert, she serves bite-size “churro tots.” Deep-fried churros are usually cigar shaped and made out of pâte á choux, the same dough of butter, milk, flour and eggs used to make cream puffs and éclairs. But Milliken replaces the butter with water, adds brown sugar and then, when it’s done, mixes in “a ton” of dulce de leche, so that the milk caramel makes up about a quarter of the total mass of the dough. She then spoons bite-size nuggets of the dough into hot oil and serves them in little paper boats with whipped cream.
Contact Bret Thorn at bret.thorn@penton.com.
