Salsa Dance

from Portland Monthly Magazine MAY 2023

Dianna Anderson Fine Art

What a relief, just in time for summer! This cocktail

Hot ’n’ Sucio (Hot & Dirty, $14) is a shock at rst sip, spicy with aji amarillo (yellow chili) paste, and sour with caper brine, and erce, an elixir to bolster anyone’s day, a fantastic detour from dominant sugar. Drops of avocado oil enhance the heat.

The lighter Chilcanito ($14) with pisco, banana oleo (an extract made from sugar-macerated banana peel), ginger-maple, citrus, and soda water circulate around a skyscraper ice cube in a tall glass embellished with a spear of banana leaf. It’s as refreshing and tangy as a Caribbean breeze.

With her March People’s Choice win at Maine Restaurant Week’s Spirit Quest Com- petition, we wandered among the cocktail list ready to be charmed. And, for a white wine with body, I was poured a glass of Field Recordings’ Skins ($14), an orange Chenin Blanc from Paso Robles that bit back, nicely, and was austerely dry. Everything augmented the food, except perhaps the wine, some still le when we enjoyed dessert—but who can complain about a big pour? e beef Empanadas ($11 for two he y crescents) induce bliss, once we let them cool enough to eat without injury. eir perfectly orchestrated crisp exteriors lled with moist ground beef piccadillo seasoned with garlic, onion, and adobo. roughout the length of the restaurant, under its ornate tin ceiling and swoop of neon over the arc of the bar, plates of fried yuca, sweet corn fritters called sorullo, and beef-and-yuca croquettes called alcapurria empty rapidly.

The escabeche ($9) on the menu was a modest bowl of pickled green bananas and onion, somewhat like a tangy potato salad—the bright green banana rendered rm and starchy by cooking.

Round glass mosaic tile glitters under the marble bar and on the oor of the bathrooms, where corner full-length mirrors are all that’s le of the Lululemon store that occupied the space a year ago.

Our platos of chicken stew with rice and marinated salt cod appear magically from the invisible kitchen, repeating the big welcome of the comfort food dished out for e serenata (salt cod, $15) soaked for hours and tender, is dressed in olive oil and citrus, with creamy avocado and quartered hard-boiled eggs in mild counterpoint to the rm texture and avor of this excellent sh.

Ms. Sanabria’s grandmother. e pollo guisado (dark meat chicken stew with rice) is su used with green pepper with a foundation of sofrito fusing recaíto that fuses onion, recao, and cilantro into a subtle background hum of avors.

A half-cup jelly jar of an ($10), creamy as pot de crème, topped with a rosette of whipped cream and a bit of Maria biscuit, sits in a puddle of precisely caramelized sugar just at the edge of burnt, its bitterness showcasing the cream’s purity. A shot of black espresso helps us stand up and leave, reluctantly, with plans to return in anticipation of tasting the pernil, served only on Sundays, and all the dishes and drinks yet untried.