My destiny calls.

I wanted to avoid turning this into a food blog: there are already so many of those, and eating habits can be an unreliable source of material. No one wants to read about your having eaten leftover spaghetti at lunch for the third day running, you know?

On the other hand, I love food. Lurrrrrrve it. And one of the great things about moving to a new place - even when it's an old new place, like I'm in now - is discovering the yumminess on offer. Furthermore, Constable Parker has already demanded more specifics about what I've eaten, and far be it from me to refuse an officer of the law. So....

Yesterday I ate the kind of lunch that makes you happy to be alive.

El Oriental de Cuba is one of those places that has never made it into my high rotation, despite being local and excellent. Hear me now, that is changing: I intend to become a regular.

I've only been in the restaurant once or twice before, but we used to order from there occasionally when I worked at Brookside (lo those many years ago). The ropa vieja is beautiful, and the first time I ever tried yuca it was from there. (I didn't love that but that's not on them, I just don't like yuca much for the same reason I don't especially care for taro: there's something kind of gluey about them that I just can't come at.) But yesterday I had something very specific in mind: I wanted a Cuban sandwich.

When you examine the ingredients, a Cuban sandwich probably doesn't sound particularly special: ham, pork, Swiss cheese, mustard, and dill pickles on crusty bread, grilled in a sandwich press. But this is a classic example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts: the flavours meld to become something spectacular; the pickles and the crusty bread give texture to counterbalance the meatiness. It all just works.

The Cuban bread is a big part of the awesomeness. It's crusty like a pane di casa, but with a soft inside that feels to me more like damper. It's beautiful. I got to eat a lot of it yesterday, as I had an appetizer* of chicken soup that came with a basket of grilled, buttered Cuban bread for dipping. It almost eclipsed the soup, and that's saying something: this was proper chicken soup, with big knuckles of chicken meat (on the bone, natch), huge chunks of potato and carrot, and bright yellow egg noodles. This soup could cure most things that ailed you, including a broken heart and leprosy. Of course, because I haven't yet acclimated to American food sizes, I figured that a small soup and a sandwich would be an entirely reasonable lunch. I began to rethink this when I saw the 'small' vat of soup and the half-loaf of bread that accompanied it. But let it never be said of me that I am easily daunted.

I had almost finished the soup when my sandwich arrived. It can be argued (and is, at length - check Chowhound) that El Oriental's version is less traditional, as it also includes lettuce, tomato, onion and mayonnaise, which are common additions in South Florida but were not part of the sandwich as it was originally made in Cuba. I skipped the tomato myself, but left the lettuce and onion because I think they add a nice crunch. So awesome, all of it. So awesome. I kept giggling to myself with how delicious it was, especially when I chased a bite of the sandwich with a piece of the Cuban bread left from my soup. It just made everything better.

I left the restaurant about an hour after I'd first walked in, feeling just on the fungry! side of the fungry!/hull line and grinning from ear to ear. I'll be back but quick.

XOXO

* FYI, in an attempt to adjust to the local dialect I'll be using the American terms 'appetizer' for entrée and 'entrée' for main course. I know that 'entrée' for main course makes absolutely no bloody sense; the link du jour is a stab at the etymology that seems reasonable, even if I still disagree with the result.