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Pambiche
2811 NE Glisan St., 233-0511,
www.
apambichao.
com
Open 11 am-10 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 11 am-11 pm Friday and
Saturday.
Closed Sunday and Monday.
Prices moderate.
Picks: Papas rellenas,
yucca frita, habichuelas rojas (red beans), ropa vieja,
lengua en salsa, sangria and almost every dessert.
Nice touch: Bright pink
exterior, covered outdoor dining area.
"Pambiche" is Spanglish for Palm Beach, a name applied
to a merengue-foxtrot hybrid developed for polyrhythmic-impaired
American soldiers during the US occupation of the Dominican
Republic from 1916-24.
Sokolov writes that "a world empire pouredits ingredients
into an empty bowl and whipped up a menu unlike any that
had existed before."
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In a saner world--or just one where common sense prevailed
a little more often--instead of vacationing at Disneyworld
we'd be in Cuba, dancing the rumba, drinking mojitos
and eating what food scholar Raymond Sokolov calls the "most
original" New World cuisine. But because of our hypocritical
40-year vendetta against the man who only wanted to free
his country from a tyrannical oligarchy fueled with dollars
from mafia-run casinos, you can go to jail for spending
money on the proud, impoverished little island that should
be a paradise.
Long before the revolution, the embargo, the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of sugar prices in
the early 1990s, cooks on Cuba (as well as the neighboring
islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic) built
a cuisine from scratch. In his book Why We Eat What We
Eat, Sokolov, who's written for the New York Times,
Wall Street Journal and Natural History magazines,
documents the evolution. In the wake of Columbus, Spanish
colonists decimated the native Taino population and erased
any memories of indigenous cooking. Old-world tastes and
new-world foods such as tomatoes and corn combined with
African flavors and native plants like yucca and sweet potatoes.
The Spanish fleet roamed the seas and brought foodstuffs
from Europe and Asia. Sokolov writes that "a world empire
poured its ingredients into an empty bowl and whipped up
a menu unlike any that had existed before."
Pambiche provides a taste of what Cuban cuisine once was
and could be. John Connel-Maribona, Pambiche's Cuban-American
chef and owner, calls the food "comida criolla,"
or creole cuisine. I call it delicious. Start with the selection
of appetizers, which includes foods that go back to the
very beginning of Cuban cooking. Both the fritters (frituras)
and the croquettes (croquetas) descend from West
African accra, a fried dumpling made from split peas
that spawned innumerable spin-offs throughout the islands.
Pambiche's are hot and crispy, the croquetas filled
with ham or chicken, the frituras with corn or squash.
Papas rellenas are another version, this time made
from mashed potatoes wrapped around the slightly sweet ground
beef and vegetable mixture called piccadillo, rolled
in breadcrumbs and fried to a deep brown, with a satisfying
crunch that yields to soft interior. Some people find the
fried green plantains called tostones a little too
starchy, but I liked them, especially with the shockingly
red, slightly spicy Filipino banana ketchup.
An order of yucca frita should be mandatory. Yucca
(a.k.a. manioc, breadfruit, cassava or tapioca) is the starchy
carbohydrate that provides the bulk of the calories for
poor people between the horse latitudes around the world.
It's ground into flour and pounded to a sticky paste. Fermented,
it provides an intoxicating beverage. The spherical pellets
of yucca starch called tapioca make a great if old-fashioned
dessert. At Pambiche, the tuber is fried and tossed with
a garlic sauce; the result is sort of like a moist, flavorful
plate of home fries, but different and better. Both red
beans (with an ingredient the menu calls "el secreto
del sabor" that is probably some kind of pork) and the
vegetarian black beans derive their satisfying flavor from
a Spanish-style sofrito, a slow-cooked blend of garlic,
onions and green peppers. The salads are all composed--not
a lettuce leaf in sight. Red and green cabbage with grated
carrots in an herby citrus dressing provides a cleansing
crunch, while the avocado and red onion contrast mellow
creamy with crispy hot. The most well-known item in the
stateside Cuban culinary repertoire is a pork sandwich,
ex-pat fast food from Miami to New York. The Pambiche version
includes a slice of adobo-marinated roast pork, Black Forest
ham, Swiss cheese and dill pickle, all layered into a mustard-spread
roll that's toasted in a sandwich press. It comes out compressed,
the cheese slightly melted, the hard outer crust of the
roll cracked and warm and wonderfully tasty. The roast pork
shows up again on the plato Cubano, alongside black
beans, rice and a side of yucca frita. The same lineup,
without the meat and including a little of the cabbage salad,
is called plato Comunista and described as the "contemporary
Cuban plate" without a hint of sarcasm.
Ropa vieja, slowly cooked flank steak flavored with
lots of garlic, gets its name from a supposed resemblance
to old clothes. It tastes much better. Picadillo
combines ground beef with garlic and peppers flavored with
cumin, oregano, olives and raisins. Spanish sherry adds
to the spicy-sweet blend, and the mixture is served over
a mound of rice.
Chef Connel-Maribona pays homage to Mama Ivonne with lengua
en salsa, slices of tongue simmered fork-tender in a
tomato and pimiento sauce flavored with mild chiles and
toasted almonds. Connel-Maribona has worked as a pastry
chef in several restaurants, including Papa Haydn, and his
desserts at Pambiche rival anything in town. They range
from classic European pastry forms imbued with tropical
flavors to traditional simple sweets. At one end you'll
find la banana borracha (the drunken banana), banana
cake soaked with dark Meyer's rum and banana liqueur, and
torta domino, a white chocolate and mocha torte with
espresso, Kahlua and chocolate mousse topped with a chocolate
domino. At the other end are arroz con leche, a lemony
rice pudding, and chocolate-dipped macaroons called coquitos.
The 75-year-old concrete building that houses Pambiche
looks like it would fit right into the time-warped neighborhoods
of Havana, especially if you parked a '54 Ford out front.
Even the loggia, framed with blocky columns and rare on
Portland buildings, has a tropical feel (and on a more practical
note, it offers outdoor dining sheltered from both sun and
rain). The bright pink exterior lets you know right away
that nothing is taken too seriously, and inside the sun-drenched
colors of sky, beach and ocean combine with the sounds of
merengue to take you away, if only for an hour or two, to
a magical island where life is always good.
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