It is exhausting to overlook the pink, yellow and inexperienced constructing that homes the latest Cuban restaurant in Phoenix.
In March, Arianna Pared Villegas opened Cocina La Negra on a stretch of sixteenth Avenue recognized for its murals, eating places and bars. One of many indicators propped outdoors reads “Cuban Meals,” with the painted flags of Cuba and Yucatán.
Extra flags cling from the roof: america, Mexico, Cuba and Arizona, all of the locations that Pared Villegas has known as house. A bigger-than-life portray of famed Afro-Cuban singer Celia Cruz, “La Guarachera de Cuba,” additionally hangs on the wall.
Inside, the furnishings is mismatched and the playlist entertains company with the full of life rhythms of danzón.
It is nonetheless a one-woman operation for Pared Villegas, who’s the only cook dinner and server. However do not anticipate her to look hurried. She desires her company to really feel relaxed as she brings out heavy plates of homestyle arroz, yuca, ensalada and pollo. And she or he all the time makes time for purchasers who wish to chat.
Who’s ‘La Negra’?
Pared Villegas grew up in Santa Isabel de las Lajas, a city in Cuba that she described as the attractive land of Benny Moré, a well-known singer nicknamed “El Bárbaro del Ritmo.”
The restaurant’s identify is a nod to her Afro-Cuban roots and her grandmother Josefa Gómez, who’s of Congolese descent.
European colonizers first introduced enslaved African laborers to Cuba within the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries after they worn out most of Cuba’s Indigenous Taíno inhabitants. The estimated share of Afro-Cubans residing in Cuba varies by survey, however within the 2012 census, greater than 1 million Cubans recognized as Afro-Cuban — about 10% of the inhabitants, not together with individuals who determine as mulatto, or of blended Black and white ancestry.
To today, African influences may be discovered all through Cuba, from faith to music to food. For instance fufú in Cuba, or mashed plantains, is a dish derived from African fufu, a sticky dough made out of pounded cassava, plantains and cocoyams. One other is quimbombó, a stew made with okra, plantains and pork.
“My grandmother would die for quimbombó. She instructed me the way it makes her mouth water,” Pared Villegas instructed The Arizona Republic.
As a toddler her mom labored as a cook dinner at her college and Pared Villegas grew up watching each her mom and Josefa cook dinner. She realized how a lot water to make use of for bean stews and the right way to search for plantains that had yellowed with age to fry for candy plantanitos. She additionally realized it is extra enjoyable to cook dinner with music on and dancing within the kitchen.
Earlier than transferring to Arizona, Pared Villegas lived for greater than a decade in Mérida, a metropolis in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, an space with a history of Cuban immigrants. There she operated her first La Negra restaurant as a cocina económica, a kind of informal restaurant providing inexpensive lunch. There she served a mixture of Cuban and Mexican meals.
She has since moved La Negra to Phoenix the place she focuses totally on Cuban delicacies.
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What’s on the menu at this new Cuban restaurant?
A white board outdoors Cocina La Negra in Phoenix lists the menu of the day, which adjustments frequently. The easiest way to order is to easily ask for “a little bit little bit of every thing” for a plate of rice, salad, yuca, plantain and parts of the day’s meat dishes. Just lately the menu featured fried pork cutlet with onion, beef steak and onion, or fricase de pollo, a Cuban-style stewed hen.
Pared Villegas additionally makes ropa vieja, one of many nationwide dishes of Cuba, made with shredded flank steak in a tomato-based sauce. Dishes like ropa vieja and fricase de pollo are sometimes served with rice.
Cocina La Negra gives white rice, arroz congrí, a dish of white rice and black beans cooked collectively, and arroz amarillo con vegetales y jamón, yellow rice with ham and greens.
The restaurant can accommodate vegan preferences for his or her mixture plates, too. Vegetarian choices embrace mushy and starchy boiled yuca served with a vegetable chimichurri medley on high. Relying on the day, Pared Villegas cooks boiled plantains or mariquitas de plátano, fried plantain chips.
Different choices embrace cubanos, a kind of ham-and-cheese sandwich popularized by Cuban immigrants in Florida, and tayuyos (additionally spelled tallullos), the Cuban model of tamales that Pared Villegas cooks with pork or chicharrones.
Most of those meals remind her of her household. Rising up as one in every of seven kids, Pared Villegas remembered instances when it regarded like there was nothing to eat, then however her mom would make arroz con leche and ensure everybody obtained a plate.
“We had been poor, however we loved every thing,” Pared Villegas stated. “I miss my mother so much, however perhaps it feels after I’m within the kitchen, she’s with me.”
Cocina La Negra is open Tuesday by Sunday from 11 a.m. to six p.m. Search for a colourful constructing and a black signal that claims ‘CUBAN CUISINE’ on the sidewalk.
Particulars: 4401 N. sixteenth St., Phoenix. 602-300-6151.
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Attain the reporter Priscilla Totiyapungprasert @priscillatotiya on Twitter and Instagram.
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