Carolina Cuban

Amazing sights keep popping up in these old mountains. None of them more surprising than the new restaurant on the block in uptown Franklin, North Carolina.

“Havana Bistro”, they call it - and they say they serve real Cuban Cuisine! Well. We’ll see.

We stopped by on a miserable, rainy September afternoon. We were supposed to be home, staining our deck but the rain had sent us shopping. By the time we got to the bistro we were hungry and ready to chew our way through to Reality.

I had fried pork, rice and black bean soup. JoAnn had a Cuban Sandwich. The sandwich was good - almost real. Enormous. The bread a bit off but all in all not bad.

Their rice was OK. It was plain white rice, small grain. Our waitress was the daughter of the owner just up here for the summmer. She is from Miami, a college student, and told us that the Miami-Cubans eat white rice, whereas the west coast (Tampa) Cubans eat their rice with annoto color. The black bean soup was delicious. It had flavors of beans, greenpeppers, tomato, onion, garlic, bay leaf, and another flavor I “identified” as the Indian spice Garam Masala. The fried pork cubes were very crisp and crunchy on the outside, and the flaky white interior carried the flavor of Mojo. It was crisp, crunchy, chewy and delicious. I would call it droolingly good. Authenic? I couldn’t begin to tell, but if I had been a dog I would have rolled in it.

© John Womack, 2006. All Rights Reserved.