Foodsday Tuesday: Phillyist Tastes the Forbidden Island

Appetizers
1. Pressed Cuban Bread & Mango Butter
Cuban bread is always delicious, and the mango butter served with it was sweet without being cloying. It did, however, need a little more salt (none was at the table) to cut the sweetness and keep the flavor of the butter from melding too much with the flavor of the mojitos we were drinking.

2. Fire and Ice Ceviche
The house specialty of ¡Pasion! was the ceviche, and Chef Pernot has brought the quality of his ceviche to Cuba Libre. The coconut milk on the sushi-grade tuna is just enough to add a creamy sweetness to the fish without detracting from its flavor. And the red onion escabeche acted as a nice counterpart. One of us thought it needed a little more cilantro, but the other (who seems to recall having the exact same tuna-coconut milk ceviche at ¡Pasion!) had no complaints. On the whole, a quality ceviche that we're glad hasn't been lost from Philadelphia after the closing of ¡Pasion!, and we hope Chef Pernot will expand the ceviche offerings at Cuba Libre, as this is the only one on the menu at present.

3. Mariquitas Latin America (black bean hummus with yuca and plantain chips, enchilado salsa, garlic mojo)
One of the more traditional dishes we partook of during our dinner, this black bean dip was flavorful and thick. So thick, in fact, that the plantain and yuca chips placed vertically into it for presentation didn't stand a chance and ended up breaking off every time we tried to use them to scoop the dip. The salsa and mojo were both excellent, but we preferred them on the empanadas (see below) than as a part of this dish.

4. Chicken and Corn Empanadas
Definitely one of the best components of the appetizer course, and arguably one of the best plates of the evening, the empanadas were filled with a savory, slightly spicy combination of chicken, corn, cheese, and seasonings, then fried until the dough was perfectly crispy, yet still soft on the inside. When dipped into the salsa and mojo sauces mentioned above, they were even better. One downside to this dish, though: the very, very overdressed spinach salad served with it.

5. Guava BBQ Ribs
One half of this reviewing team is a Texan who believes all ribs should be slightly spicy, so it took her a few bites to acclimate to this very sweet dish. We were given two ribs, of which one was almost too lean and the other almost too fatty, making for quite different dining experiences at our table. We could definitely agree, though, that while the sauce was excellent (even if it wasn't at all spicy) – the ribs themselves were basically standard. Nothing more, nothing less.

Entrees
6. Churrasco a la Cubana (grilled skirt steak)
One of the problems with a tasting menu is that everything is served in smaller portions, and therefore, everything is cooked in smaller portions. And steak, unfortunately, is simply not something that should be cooked in two inch by three inch rectangles. Although it was technically grilled to the proper "doneness" (medium-rare), the steak still ended up being quite rubbery. The flavor was dead on, so we know this isn't a problem with Chef Pernot's recipe, but rather with his staff's execution of the dish.

7. Camarones con Caña (sugarcane-skewered jumbo shrimp)
This was the strongest of the proteins on our entree plate, if a little cold. (That was probably our fault – we'd saved the shrimp for last.) The shrimp, cooked on a stick of sugarcane, had absorbed the flavor, aided greatly by the sticky mango barbecue sauce it had been coated with before being butterflied and grilled. One of the Phillyists at the table is unable to eat avocado, and so didn't partake of the "Guacamole Cubano" with which the shrimp was served, but the other thought it was a well-executed contrast to the sweetness and texture of the shrimp.

8. Suntanned Salmon
Again, here, is the problem with cooking small pieces of meat (or, in this case, fish): one of us had a perfectly-cooked piece of salmon, and the other ended up with a piece that was dry and overcooked. As with the steak, we could agree that the flavor was there, but only one of us could award points for the execution of the dish. Our other point of contention with this plate was that we see some kind of glazed salmon on every moderate-upscale menu in Philadelphia, and on a tasting menu, we were hoping for something a bit more adventurous.

9. Signature Watercress Salad
For better or for worse, this may have been the best dish on our entree plate: a perfect palate cleanser to rid you of the taste of whatever you just ate and prepare you for what's to come. The flavor was light and clean and served its purpose extraordinarily well. It might, however, have been easier to eat if the watercress had been cut apart a little, rather than left in its vine-like form. People don't usually eat salads (unless they're whole romaine heads or iceberg wedges) expecting to need a knife.

Side Dishes
10. Moros y Cristianos (black beans and rice)
It's surprisingly easy to screw up this dish, but fortunately, Chef Pernot and his staff did exactly the opposite, providing a strong, flavorful side dish to the entree course. Of all the things on our table during the entree course, this, surprisingly, is what we ate the most of.

11. Rapini de Enchilado (broccoli rabe with tomatoes)
We have no idea if broccoli rabe is a traditional Cuban vegetable, or if Chef Pernot prepares this dish to appeal to Philadelphians' palates, but either way, we enjoyed it quite a bit. It's incredibly pungent (shouldn't broccoli rabe be, though?), but if you're a fan of bold flavors, it's definitely a dish for you. Just make sure to take a bite of that watercress salad after, or you might not taste anything else!

12. Maduros (fried ripened plantains)
Neither of us are huge plantain fans to begin with, but we can usually abide them just fine. These, however... We each took one bite and moved the dish away. Plantains, for those not in the know, look like bananas, but are used in cooking (while regular bananas are most often eaten raw), and have a lower sugar content than the familiar (to us, anyway) fruit. These, however, didn't taste like they had a lower sugar content. In fact, they tasted like regular bananas, injected with corn syrup, rolled in sugar, and then pan fried. Cuban food is typically sweet, but this was really over-the-top.

12a. Tostones (fried plantain cakes)
Alexis brought us tostones, despite them not officially being a part of the tasting menu, because she felt that they're an important Cuban dish – and they're also a favorite of hers. They're made by mashing unripe plantains down into pancake-like shapes and coating them in garlic, then deep-frying them and serving them with a garlic mojo sauce. At this point, plantains were tied 1-1 (the chips with the hummus were great; the maduros above, significantly less so), but this dish did help save the fruit's reputation for us. We're big fans of anything with garlic in it, and because unripe plantains are starchy and not sweet, we found these to be quite good. However, as they weren't part of the tasting menu, we got a full-sized serving of them—three huge patties—and we weren't able to even finish a third of the dish. A note, too, to any planning on ordering this dish: eat them while they're still warm. As they cool, they change in consistency: hard to cut into and hard to chew. We enjoyed them, and we recommend you order them, but eat them quickly.

Desserts*
13. Flan de Coco (coconut flan)
We're neither huge fans of coconut nor of flan, but this... Well, this was delicious. More pana cotta-like than the kinds of flan we're used to eating in Mexican restaurants (it wasn't at all gelatinous), it, combined with our meal at James last week, made us think that maybe it's not that we don't like coconut, but instead, it's that we've just had a lot of coconut dishes prepared by people who don't know how to cook with coconut.

14. Pastel de Chocolate y Almendras (chocolate almond cake)
One of us loves chocolate, the other refuses to touch it. But for the chocolate-eater in our pair, this cake was pretty standard fare. It had a good flavor, but the cake itself (minus the icing) was fairly dried-out. Fortunately, the cake was served with some small pieces of fresh pineapple, which injected some much-needed moisture into the dish. So in the end, it turned out to be a pretty good dessert, but we couldn't help but think that we can get chocolate cake anywhere.

15. Pudin de Pan (warm Cuban bread pudding with dulce de leche gelato)
Wow. Now this was a dessert! Served at exactly the temperature that bread pudding should be served at, it was rich without being heavy, sweet without being saccharine, and all around one of the top three dishes we had over the course of the evening.

Well, there you have it! Fifteen Cuban dishes, sampled by the Phillyist staff and reviewed for you. The tasting menu will run through October 26, and overall, we give it our endorsement. It won't be perfect, but it will absolutely satisfy.

*We should probably note, at this point, that when you only have two non-sherry/cognac/brandy/liqueur/coffee dessert beverages on your menu (there were plenty of the aforementioned categories), you should never, ever run out of one of them. One of us ordered a Reisling ice wine, but ended up with another mojito, as the bar was all out. And dammit, we wanted that wine.

Image from the Cuba Libre Philadelphia virtual tour.