Dining
LOS HAPPY BELLY'S
895 Murfreesboro Road,
356-7757
The question marks don’t stop upon entering the restaurant, which announces itself as a hybrid of Cuban and Puerto Rican cuisines with the inversely colored flags of those two island countries hanging on the walls. A fake palm tree and murky fish tank convey an unmistakable island theme, but with little sense of kitsch.
The dining plan is straightforward, centering on a buffet counter at the front of the room. It can be a little confusing as to whether you’re supposed to seat yourself, wait to be seated, order first, or sit, then order. But in our experience there were so few people dining at lunch that it didn’t really matter what you did.
Generous Helpings Los Happy Belly’s puts a Cuban twist on meat-and-three.
Photos: ericengland.net
In fact, the traffic was so slim that a couple of times our server actually joined us for the conversation. That’s great if you are curious about menu items such as mofongo, ropa vieja and picadillo, which we are. But it can be difficult if you don’t speak Spanish, which we don’t.
Fortunately, we had Spanish-speakers of Cuban descent with us on two visits. Once everyone tuned into a Spanish dialogue, the conversation quickly turned to the subject of immigration and the comparison of everyone’s arrival dates in the U.S.
Co-owner Jose Santos arrived in Nashville about five months ago from New York, where he immigrated as a teenager from the Dominican Republic. His business partners are fellow Dominican Alexandra Abreu and Guatemalan brothers Alfonso, Santos, Chavelo and Danny Perez, who came to the U.S. about a decade ago.
While none of them is from either Cuba or Puerto Rico, the owners would all be familiar with the flavors and ingredients that weave throughout the Caribbean and find their way to Los Happy Belly’s. Beans and rice are a primary feature of the buffet table, which usually holds moro rojo (red beans and rice), arroz con gandules (white rice with peas), congri (rice with black beans) and plain white rice.
At lunch, $7.99 buys a plate with one of the rice-and-bean combinations, a meat and two sides. The choice of meats usually includes pork, chicken and beef. We enjoyed the picadillo, a traditional dish of ground beef lightly seasoned and dotted with green peppers. We also liked the chicken fricassee, a roasted dish of tender meat with onion, garlic, green peppers and a slight tinge of tomatoes. Ropa vieja was a comforting version of pot roast. The stew of beef—boiled, then torn apart by hand and cooked in a skillet—takes its name from its resemblance to old, tattered clothes.
Unlike the more familiar Mexican cuisine, Cuban and Puerto Rican specialties deliver very little spice, and the subtle palate might disappoint diners who expect more kick and bright flavor. To be sure, the lack of spice puts an emphasis on the meat—which, in the case of the very dry puerco asada (roast pork shoulder), is not necessarily a good thing.
But Los Happy Belly’s offers a handful of specialties that are interesting, even delicious. Among them is the yuca frita (fried cassava root). The thick, deep-fried exterior of the tuber chunk melts in the mouth, and is made even more intriguing by a drizzle of garlic-infused oil.
And there are the plantains. We sampled the mofongo, a Puerto Rican dish of mashed green plantains with bits of pork, which folks more familiar with Cuban food might know as fufu.
While Los Happy Belly’s does offer a Cuban sandwich—the de rigueur grilled concoction of ham, roast pork, cheese and pickle—it’s not a memorable departure from any standard-issue sandwich of those ingredients.
On weekends, Los Happy Belly’s serves the Dominican specialty pasteles en hojas—mashed plantain with root vegetables and ground meat, steamed inside a plantain leaf—and the Puerto Rican dish alcappuria, a fried mixture of beef, plantains and other vegetables. While we did not try either specialty, we did encounter the simple delicacy of fried ripe plantains on the weekday buffet. On the day we arrived for lunch at noon, the plantains had just emerged from the oil and still had a precious, deep-fried lace around the edges, which disappeared upon hitting the tongue. The subtle fruit—less sweet than a banana, softer than a steak fry—was by the far the highlight of our visits.
For dessert, Los Happy Belly’s serves churros, cigar-shaped versions of doughnuts, which come frozen and are deep-fried to order. The other dessert, arroz con leche (rice pudding), was not available on our visits, but it’s hard to imagine it could have been a better closer than the plantains.
Los Happy Belly’s opens 11 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday and closes 6 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 10 p.m. Friday and Sunday. Saturday is Caribbean Night with dancing from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.
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