Restaurant Review - Of rice and men
Norcross’ Santo Domingo a masculine bastion for true Dominican delights
Six curvaceous Latina women appear from nowhere, roving through the restaurant in a jiggly, shimmery pack. They each wear plastic, cherry red cowboy hats and matching shirts tied in knots to expose their tight midriffs. It’s like a scene straight out of “Charlie’s Angels.” Drifting from table to table, the posse giggles and chats with the men folk, for what purpose exactly is yet to be revealed. They’re not taking food orders — that much is clear.
This sure isn’t the Santo Domingo I remember.
The one I fondly recall was a Buford Highway staple that served Dominican food from a steam table. An international cross-section of Atlanta would sit together in its diminutive dining room, savoring tawny stews with rice and beans. I was sad when I pulled into Santo Domingo’s parking lot a couple of months ago, only to find its doors shut. Where would I get my goat stew and mashed plantain fix?
Then, a few weeks ago, I received a fortuitous phone call from a friend who works in Gwinnett: “I just spotted another Santo Domingo off Jimmy Carter Boulevard. Did you know about it?”
“Umm, no. What are you doing for lunch today?”
We crack open the door of the Jimmy Carter Boulevard locale to find ... no steam table in sight. The room is dark, with wood paneling and green vinyl booths. Signed baseball jerseys hang on the wall. Random movie posters — The Godfather, Star Wars — line the corridor in the back that leads to the restrooms. There’s a sectioned-off dancefloor to the left. It looks like the owners of the restaurant recently moved in and took the place exactly as it was in its previous incarnation as a sports bar.
Or maybe not.
“How long have you been at this location?” I ask our server as she shows us to one of the booths situated around the bar.
“Three-and-a-half years,” she answers.
“Oh,” I reply, surprised. “What happened to the one on Buford Highway?”
“We lost our lease. I used to work there. We also had a restaurant in Gainesville that closed. It’s just this one now.”
She brings us iced tea and we thumb through the booklet of a menu. We begin with Dominican-style codfish fritters — flat, crisp patties with a pronounced but affably oceanic tang. (I’m soon to catch on that anything labeled “Dominican-style” is worth trying here.) I eagerly dive into my beloved goat stew, only to find it saltier than I remember. Overly salted meat is a consistent problem here, though I notice that the accompanying plantain dishes are wisely under-salted and bring needed balance to the palette.
My friend gets pernil — slices of tender roast pork shoulder — and a side of mofongo, fried mashed plantains with roasted pork bits. The combination hits the mark, an Afro-Caribbean variation on Thanksgiving flavors that clearly illustrates the provincial appeal of Dominican cuisine. This isn’t typical, gussied-up restaurant fare. It’s the meaty, starchy, maternal foods of home.
Keep that in mind when you order and you’ll avoid several of the menu’s pitfalls. Crepes stuffed with bits of seafood and gluey cheese? No thanks. Ditto for the shrimp in a sauce that tastes like tomato paste and canned coconut milk stirred together and heated. And spaghetti with albondigas, the meatballs that can be so herby and spicy in Mexican cuisine? Flat and familiar. Chef Boyardee apparently didn’t pick up any new tricks on his tropical vacation.
Fish fillet in garlic sauce, though, turns out to be a supple piece of catfish. The pungent, buttery sauce also makes a fitting dip for tostones, twice-cooked plantains that aren’t mashed as flat here as they typically are, but make for good snacking nonetheless.
Locrio is the distant cousin of paella, the rice colored with annatto instead of saffron. Santo Domingo makes a memorable version with chunks of feisty chorizo-like sausage in a pile of rice that’s almost too greasy but not quite. I wouldn’t order it alone as an entree, but it’s worth a fork fight with tablemates to dig through and snag the last bites of sausage.
I dare myself during another lunch to order pescado Santo Domingo — fish stuffed with broccoli and cheese. Expecting something akin to a Lean Cuisine meal, I’m taken aback when a precisely stuffed and folded piece of fish appears in front of me. I cut open the piscine package and am even more astonished. The fish tastes fresh, the broccoli still has texture and the mild cheese doesn’t overwhelm the other ingredients. Who knew? They certainly didn’t serve anything like this on the Buford Highway steam table.
It’s during this second lunch that I realize the clientele here is almost entirely male. I think I saw two women partaking in a meal during my three visits. The men either eat alone — slowly sipping a beer and chowing on stewed pork ribs with rice and peas — or they sit in groups of three or more and watch whatever game happens to be playing on the television above the bar. The servers are all women, however. There’s definitely a machismo dynamic at play in this place.
So I probably shouldn’t have been surprised when the roving pack of beauties appeared on the scene during a Sunday night dinner. Music blares like there’s a party in full motion, though the restaurant is almost empty. The ladies sidle up to our table. One of them holds up a jug of Jose Cuervo.
“Free shot of tequila?”
My friend doesn’t drink. But I do. What the hell, I’ll have a swig.
The tallest woman in the bunch pours a splash of liquid gold in a plastic cup and tilts it up to my lips. Gulp. Then someone passes her a wedge of lime and she sticks that in my mouth, too.
“We’ll be here on Thursdays,” she purrs in my ear. They all wave and move on to the next gaggle of un-suspecting souls.
My face is red. My friend has a good chuckle at my expense. Well, if business is slow at this last outpost of Santo Domingo, that’s one way to draw in the manly men.