I had the seafood paella for lunch at this grossly misnamed Caribbean/Latin restaurant on 50 near UCH/434 on Saturday. It has two paellas! The Valencian ( I think they misspelled it on the menu) which I ordered, but, didn't get. It was made with four legged ingredients. And a seafood that was made with frozen and canned water breathers. A full portion is $35. Ridiculous, but, not unheard of (why I usually never order it). A half is $17.50. I would reiterate that this place is more of an islandy mofongo and tripleta place. They have no justification for tricking you into thinking it may be Spanish food. Not that that should be enticing enough anyway. I should have done a two entree meal for $20 or just a sandwich for $6. I could sense that this place wouldn't know what it was doing. But, we all have to be so open minded these days. The place itself is also underwheming. It must have been an old Long John Silver's (it still has a drive thru) that they didn't redocorate. And on top of those fishing nets and shell diaramas, they hung Asian fans. Makes perfect sense. The chairs are all mix and match. The tables are covered with plastic. They have exposed wires and dusty glasses disturbing the eye. A real mess.
Back to the "paella". As I said, the shellfish (3 mussels, 3 clams, 3 shrimp and a lobster claw) that came with their unis on were obviously frozen. The meat had freezer burn or just tasted rancid (clams). The mini mussels, squid, scallops and clams they added to supplement the decorative pieces were straight out of a can. They were salty and desicated. They added some some chewy calamari rings, but, they had no flavor. Which is probably good because flavor must mean salt where they learned to cook. I would bet they even chintzed on the saffron and used turmeric. The rice was probably not even bomba rice. You know you are in trouble when you are experiencing the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) during your meal. I'm not sure if I ever got to number five. My bargaining was to just not get seafood poisoning while out on the town later in the day. The waitress said the food was (at least in part) Dominican. That explains it. It's like trusting an Asian buffet to prepare your sushi. They just don't know how to do it and don't know that they don't know because they have never seen it done right. This place also serves to expose Bite magazine and the fat lady at the Sentinel as the charlatans that they are. If they refuse to retract their opinions on this place (paella in particular) then I suggest that they be relieved of their duties. Only the most generous of untraveled yokels would find this acceptable. If you don't believe me, book a flight to Valencia and see for yourselves. The place seats 120. All the more unfortunate because they can disappoint greater numbers. Happily, the place was almost empty when I ate there and the ones who were there were probably brought up on these bastardized versions of European staples. The one good thing was the service. The poor one woman show was polite. I felt bad for her that her task masters fed themselves in front of her until I received my meal. It was actually an act of kindness. Huge miss. The worst part is that the preparation took a long time. so, either they were cooking their own lunch when they should have been cooking mine or this travesty was freshly made. I suggest you leave this place to the ex-pat day laborers that come here for the "back of the plantacion" make do's.
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