Cubano Cafe and Vatan

Friday night after a few failed attempts to eat in a few well-known restaurants (Lupa,  Blue Ribbon, Blue Ribbon Sushi), we headed into Cubano Café for what we thought was going to be just a drink and to get out of the downpour.  Cubano Café is a near hole in the wall that lies on the border of Soho and the West Village but the incredibly cheap impressive food stands out like a solar eclipse.  And that is before you tank down four of the most impressive mojitos this side of Havana.  You enter the restaurant by stepping down passing through brightly colored hues reminiscent of every Latin American country.  As you head to the bar you notice that they serve Mexican beer which seems a little weird but you quickly forget about that because the first mojito goes down like a cold glass of water after a trek through the Gobi desert.  We were seated quickly, beating the rush, at a table in the middle of the restaurant.  Five of us dominated this small eatery especially when we debated whether or not relationships work.  I, of course was on prosecution of the topic.   There are various salads and soups to choose or an arrangement of quesadillas to put something in your stomach to soak up the rum from the mojito since by this point you are probably on your second one.  Quesadillas on a Cuban restaurants menu now just stands out since this is the second time something remotely Mexican has appeared.  A little weird but the main attraction (other than the mojito's) is the very reasonably priced food.  The main courses range from less than ten dollars to about twenty, and at twenty they are serious meals.  What the restaurant lacks in Cuban food originality, it makes up for in ambience and energy.  The food is very tasty, obviously not at the level of other expensive restaurants in Manhattan, but very good, very cheap, and worth going back for.

As the hurricane remnants battered Manhattan Saturday night, we wandered from Tabla’s Bread Bar to Vatan about 7 blocks (2 avenue blocks and 5 street blocks) away.  Needless to say, we were soaked but thankfully we were quickly whisked away to our “table.”  I say “table” because nothing in this Indian restaurant that I found randomly flipping through the Michelin guide was recognizable.  First, we were asked to remove our shoes and step up into the “table” which was pretty much Japanese-like pillowed seats on the floor without anywhere to put your feet.  Second, it was vegetarian Indian, which is not that surprising once you start to think about it, but I have never had vegetarian Indian food, have you?  No lamb korma, chicken marsala, beef tikki tikki.   Third, the restaurant’s size was impressive but their use of space was most puzzling.  Nearly half of the restaurant was empty dead space.  I would say that there were probably only twenty tables or so when they could have fit double that amount.  To top it all off, it was a prixe fix meal.  A first for me in an Indian restaurant.  The appetizers and main course arrived on your own individual serving platter made of aluminum.  Yes, aluminum.  I imagine that they share these platters with Sing Sing or something.  They are the most impressively prison-like thing I have ever seen.  And our water glasses were also aluminum.  Each lovely and deliciously vegetarian item had it’s own little space on the platter and our waitress was more than excited to show us where the rice, carb’s, and extra sauces were to be placed.  Once we sat down we noticed that we were in the Epcot of Indian restaurants.  The walls were brightly painted like a rural hillside north of New Delhi.  Woman on the mural were balancing clay pots on their head as they were heading to the water well that OMG was sitting in the middle of the restaurants floor.   Wait, is that the mural or our waitress going to get our water from that well?  WAIT, the water for our dinner is coming from that WELL?   The restaurant and the food were actually very good though the experience was incredibly puzzling while in it.  It hit me the next day why it was in the Michelin guide.  Michelin loved it because the food stood out something that both restaurants provided.

Comments

[rudolfo]

who are you and why have i stumbled onto your blog? i'm fed up with queeny idiot blogs with boring ass ramblings...who cares?!??!