The Cuban Sandwich
The first time I ate a Cuban sandwich (from Porto's Bakery in Glendale), my mouth nearly jumped off my face and started dancing around. It's the clash of flavors, each elbowing each other to get to the forefront, creating a sensory overload: garlicky roast pork, sweet, salty ham, sour pickles, spicy mustard, gooey swiss cheese and crisp, chewey bread. When the second half of the sandwich wasn't quite as transcendent as the first, I developed a theory about the ratios: pork should outweigh ham 2:1, to bring out the more subtle flavor of garlic.
Porto's Cubano is refined and polite. The fillings all fit neatly on the sandwich, the bread is dry and crisp, the flavors work together as a team. At El Cochinito, the cubano is rude and rowdy. The sandwich is a little greasy, and this extends to the bread. The flavors all want to be the star, and they'll push the flavor in front of them down the stairs to get it. You wouldn't take this sandwich home to your family, but you'd sure as hell love to spend the weekend in Vegas on a bender with it.
Cafe Tropical's sandwich is somewhere in between, and somewhere else entirely. This sandwich does have a star: swiss cheese, much more abundant than at the other places, oozes out from between the bread, giving it a familiar feel: sure, grilled ham and swiss, I know this guy. It's aiming for satisfying rather than jarring. The Cafe itself may be one of the most pleasent places to eat in L.A., and by 11:00 on a Friday, it's full of Silverlake slackers slacking their day away. Photos of Fidel and Che are on the wall, and you could be easy to pretend you were in some vaguely revolutionary tropical paradise. One of the coolest murals in town is painted on a building across the street, an action portrait of psychotic monkeys brutaly eating bananas. Where Porto's is a community institution overflowing with hungry masses, arriving there as not often to buy wedding cakes, Cafe Tropical is a neighborhood hangout in the truest sense. El Cochinito, tucked anonymously into a stripmall anchored by 7-11 and Baskin & Robbins, is a place with one purpose: food. Nobody goes there but the true seekers.
Porto's Cubano is refined and polite. The fillings all fit neatly on the sandwich, the bread is dry and crisp, the flavors work together as a team. At El Cochinito, the cubano is rude and rowdy. The sandwich is a little greasy, and this extends to the bread. The flavors all want to be the star, and they'll push the flavor in front of them down the stairs to get it. You wouldn't take this sandwich home to your family, but you'd sure as hell love to spend the weekend in Vegas on a bender with it.
Cafe Tropical's sandwich is somewhere in between, and somewhere else entirely. This sandwich does have a star: swiss cheese, much more abundant than at the other places, oozes out from between the bread, giving it a familiar feel: sure, grilled ham and swiss, I know this guy. It's aiming for satisfying rather than jarring. The Cafe itself may be one of the most pleasent places to eat in L.A., and by 11:00 on a Friday, it's full of Silverlake slackers slacking their day away. Photos of Fidel and Che are on the wall, and you could be easy to pretend you were in some vaguely revolutionary tropical paradise. One of the coolest murals in town is painted on a building across the street, an action portrait of psychotic monkeys brutaly eating bananas. Where Porto's is a community institution overflowing with hungry masses, arriving there as not often to buy wedding cakes, Cafe Tropical is a neighborhood hangout in the truest sense. El Cochinito, tucked anonymously into a stripmall anchored by 7-11 and Baskin & Robbins, is a place with one purpose: food. Nobody goes there but the true seekers.
posted by Chris Oliver at 3:46 PM
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