Cuban Nights

After not ever having Cuban food ever in my life, I started eating it quite a lot in the last half year or so. Unfortunately, I haven't talked about it here. So let me quickly mention a few places that I have been to in Atlanta.

The first one is a tiny, quintessentially mom-and-pop place called Las Palmeras. It is hidden on 5th St, behind the Biltmore, going away from Georgia Tech. The building is a converted old house, and it looks like the owners still live in it. Everything on the menu is authentic. I had the pork with fried plantain chips. I can be a little picky about pork (my mom's in the best!), but the one at Las Palmeras was moist and delicious. The fried plantains were french fries-style, not caramelized as I expected. The caramelized plantains are actually called maduros. But I liked them in chips form as well. They have just the right texture for frying.

Another place I've been to is La Fonda. They have several locations around town, but I went to the one on Ponce de Leon. The Huevos Rancheros is amazing. One of the best scrambles I've had. I also had one of their breakfast wraps, which was also good.

Finally, the place I've been to the most is Havana at the intersection of Clairmont Rd and Buford Hwy. Their specialty is the Cuban sandwich, which I've had multiple times. If you order it as part of a plate, you get only half the sandwich, but it comes with rice and black beans on the side. Believe me, even half a sandwich is a lot of food (see picture!) and definitely filling enough. The bread is probably my favorite part of the sandwich. It's toasted, with a very nice crisp exterior that is sturdy enough to hold up all of the meat. However, my absolute favorite thing at Havana are their yuca fries :) Yuca (aka, cassava) is a starchy root similar to potatoes, but with slightly different texture. The fries are very very crispy on the outside, just the way I like them, and soft inside. What makes me like them so much is the "stringiness" of the fries. I can't really explain it, but I can almost see individual fibers, whatever plant structure they might be, that makes eating them very enjoyable. Oh, and fun fact: tapioca is basically dried yuca :P

A couple of other things I've had at Havana are the roast beef sandwich and the maduros. The roast beef was good, but not as good as the Cuban. The maduros are really delicious, but I like the yuca fries so much, that I always order them... The menu has a pretty extensive sandwich list and sides. I guess I'll have to pass on my favorites next time I go there and maybe try something different...