Carne Frita (fried pork with sautéed onions)
In
this week's Diningreview, Scene restaurant critic Carrington Fox checks out
Salsa Puerto Rican and Latin Cuisine, a new cafe on Palmer Place in SoBro.
Though in most Nashvillians minds, the word "salsa" automatically conjures images of tortilla chips, Fox learned that's not the relevant association here:
Founded by Puerto Rico natives Marcos Cruz and Juan Reyes, Salsa draws on the culinary traditions of the Antilles, where the island geography and related weather patterns make cultivation of corn difficult. Accordingly, Salsa leans more heavily on rice, yuca, beans, potatoes and plantains than on the ubiquitous maize of Mexican cuisine.
Just blocks from the soon-to-open Music City Center, Salsa is positioned to take advantage of that proximity, with a glass exterior, a colorful and welcoming interior, and a patio that will debut soon.
Eating through the menu, Fox found some mediocre efforts (seared tuna, churrasco steak) but also some stunning triumphs, including a gigantic center-cut pork chop:
Chuleta Can Can was like a cross-section of a pig, all the way out to the skin. Reyes rubbed that brontosaurus-sized rib with lemon pepper, garlic, vinegar and red-orange spices, then scored the bumper of skin and fat around the whole thing so that it buckled in the heating process and took on the beautiful scalloped appearance of a seashell — like a caramelized chicharrón-style carapace over tender juicy meat. It was a giant buttery, spicy, unctuous, pork-rind-encrusted thing of beauty that fed my entire party of five and reduced the gray tuna and tough steak to pale distant memories.
How about you, Bites compadres? Anybody been to Salsa? Anybody familiar with Puerto Rican cuisine, a rarity on the Nashville food scene? Oh, and the dish her family nicknamed "banana lasagna." I want that.
