Restaurant Review - Su Casa Es Tu Casa
La Hispaniola creates a homey atmosphere for hearty Dominican fare
Autentica! It brings back memories, laughs my Spanish-speaking friend as we mosey into La Hispaniola’s simple, cheerful dining room. It’s a mellow Saturday night, and three kids who obviously belong to the staff and are stuck here for the night look bored out of their gourds.
Sometimes they huddle outside the restaurant’s door and quietly cheer if new customers walk in. Then they migrate to the community table in the back of the room. The girl glides in small circles on a slender scooter, while the two boys watch sports on the modest overhead TV. The owner, Dany Ubiera, only flings a chastising comment when she catches one of them eyeing the dessert case a little too closely.
But never do these three seem out of place or obtrusive. They simply blend in among the Dominican ex-pats and young gringo couples who have discovered this earnest venture started by Ubiera and her husband, Victor, nine months ago.
La Hispaniola, which serves only lunch during the week, is the most recent addition to the unexpected collage of ethnic restaurants that have popped up around Marietta Square. The area already includes Slovakia, Australian Bakery Cafe, Efes (a Turkish restaurant), La Cafe Crepe and Thaicoon & Sushi Bar. Throw in a German beer garden and a Brazilian steak house and the square could claim its own culinary Epcot Center.
Not to imply that La Hispaniola is Disney-fied; just the opposite. Dany Ubiera works the floor of the restaurant by herself while her cooks - all women, from the glances I’ve snuck - stand squarely at the stove in the back, cranking out forthright Dominican food.
Ubiera will stride up to your table, apologize that no alcohol is available and, in a lilting tone, tick off a list of the natural juices and fruit shakes she can offer instead: mango, papaya, guayaba (guava), gaunabana. I’m partial to the tamarindo, which is muddy in color but has a pleasantly puckery smack that cuts through the sharpness of garlic, which is used lavishly in many dishes.
Like most island fare, Dominican food is hearty stuff. Fried or stewed meats and stomach-filling starches predominate. (It’s one of life’s ironies that a cuisine developed in the tropics is really most enjoyable during cold snaps like the one we’ve recently experienced.) Vegetarians? Seek sustenance elsewhere. You’ll be stuck picking at an anemic salad or a plate of oily fried eggplant. Everything’s flavored with meat.
La Hispaniola’s appetizer list is short and, unless you’re really craving some chicken wings, unnecessary to explore. Dig right into the main plates. Have no fear: There’s no way you’re leaving hungry.
Overcooked and desiccated pork tends to be the norm at Dominican and Puerto Rican restaurants. It’s a joy to find a place where that isn’t the case. Strips of pernil (roasted pork shoulder) have an almost milky quality. Pinkish, gently pickled onions scattered on top save them from being bland. Masitas de cerdo fritas - chunks of fried pork - manage to have both a satisfyingly crusty exterior and moist interior.
Both goat and oxtail are served in ruddy gravy, potent from long cooking and abundant seasoning (you can make out speckles of oregano, a favorite herb in Dominican cuisine, floating in the sauce). The meat is still on the bone, but I’m willing to go the interactive route, particularly with the oxtail, when the meat is so tender it comes off with the gentlest of tugs.
As remarkably eloquent as these home-style preparations are, it’s what comes on the side of the plate that will lure me back to La Hispaniola.
Plantains. Dominican cooks know how to love on some plantains. You can order perfectly fine rice and beans, but every variation of plantain I have here assuages an elemental hunger. Mangu - mashed green plantains perked with garlic and slicked with olive oil - marries to the stews like potatoes to pot roast. Tostones are crispy yet chewy and cooked in hot enough oil to avoid being greasy. Maduros - ripe, sauteed plantains - are sweet without being cloying.
And the mofongo! Man, I thought after a trip to Puerto Rico a few months ago that I’d be off the stuff for the foreseeable future. But these cooks flavor their mofongo with pork and lots of garlic before frying it into a pliant mass, and it adds nuance to every dish it’s served with.
So I’m glad I ordered mofongo with the grouper in a tomatoey criolla sauce. It’s a generous, almost silky filet of fish, but the thin sauce needs a jolt. And I filled up on mangu when I ordered camarones al ajillo, which turned out to be disappointingly diminutive shrimp floating in buttery garlic sauce. Better to stick with the meat dishes.
And to fill up on maduros if you have a sweet tooth. Maybe those kids love La Hispaniola’s tres leches cake, but to me the dessert doesn’t meld the way it should. It just tastes like dense pound cake with milk poured over it.
But don’t tell that to Ubiera. “You didn’t like it?” she asks with genuine distress. That’s the thing about family-owned Latin restaurants. You feel mighty guilty if you don’t clean your plate.
“I’m just full,” I fib with a chagrined smile. “Can I have the rest to go, please?”