Cuba de Ayer restaurant review: Channeling old Havana through a modern lens
Before we ordered a single dish at Cuba de Ayer, before he even took a single swig of beer, David Guas was telling me about a disagreement he once had with his mother over picadillo, the classic Cuban dish of ground beef spiked with raisins, green olives and so much history. Guas, chef and owner of Bayou Bakery and the son of a father born in Havana, said he prefers the dish with a tomato base. His mother, an American by birth if not by culinary sensibilities, felt just the opposite. She believed those noxious members of the nightshade family had no place in a proper picadillo.
I shared Guas’s story with Jessica Rodriguez, owner of Cuba de Ayer. She could relate. Apparently, Rodriguez and her mother-in-law, Mayra Lopez, had a similar disagreement when they first put picadillo on the menu at their Burtonsville, Md., restaurant. Rodriguez’s family hails from Havana, where, she said, tomato sauce (or tomato paste) is a regular feature of picadillo. Lopez, whose family comes from the middle and southern reaches of the island, doesn’t like the acidity that tomatoes can add to the dish. Lopez even has a term for it: “agrio,” a kind of unpleasant sourness or bitterness.
“That was my original [point] with her, 'No, I want it to be true and authentic,’ ” Rodriguez said about picadillo. “She said, ‘This is true and authentic!’ I was like, ‘I know, I know, but it’s not what everybody’s used to.’ ”
The point that I took away from this culinary debate is that Habaneros — those Cubans and Cuban Americans whose families are firmly rooted in Havana — are not unlike New Yorkers: They think their perspective is shared by everyone, even if there is a whole wide world of flavor outside these urban centers. Case in point: The picadillo at Cuba de Ayer, prepared without a single tomato, is sublime, a combination of crumbly beef, plump raisins, green olives and diced potatoes swollen with meat juices. Even Guas likes it.
Lopez won the argument over picadillo, more or less, because of fate. When Rodriguez and her husband, William, launched Cuba de Ayer in 2005, Jessica was several months pregnant. She knew she wouldn’t be able to handle a kitchen and a newborn at the same time, so she turned to her mother-in-law, who became the opening-day chef. Lopez brought her recipes, of course, dishes that reflect her cooking style based in Camaguey province, where they generally shun tomatoes, Rodriguez says.
Advertisement
Lopez, like Rodriguez’s parents, came to the United States in the 1960s, several years after Fidel Castro assumed power. Lopez’s sensibilities are pre-revolutionary, based on the many foodways that have influenced Cuban cooking, including those of Spain, Africa, China and Indigenous island communities. In this context, the restaurant’s name makes total sense: “Yesterday’s Cuba.”
Which is not to say Cuba de Ayer feels dated. Sure, the dining room channels Cuban culture, circa 1950s. Fans, outfitted with imitation palm fronds, circle overhead as the faces of Havana stare out from the gorgeous paintings and images that hang from the wall: a boy, taking a drag from a fat cigar, perhaps for the first time; an older man, a stogie hanging from his lips, hovers his hands over a row of dominoes. But this nostalgia, if you want to call it that, is filtered through a family whose sensibilities are modern, artistic, cool. I love the installation of fedoras clipped to a pair of clotheslines, which dangle in front of weather-beaten windows.
This dynamic — Cuban history and culture filtered through a contemporary lens — feels like a metaphor, maybe even a promise for the kind of future that protesters are fighting for on the island now. “We are very, very, very hopeful that this will make a change,” Rodriguez told me about the demonstrations. “We’re hoping for Cuba to be again, one day, what it was once before and what I know Cuba to be.”
The Old Havana/Modern American vibe plays out with Cuba de Ayer’s food. Many dishes are staples of the cuisine — Cuban sandwich, empanadas, beef soup, vaca frita, lechon asado, pernil, chicken and rice — and each is not only prepared to Lopez’s exacting standards but also plated on white china, which provides an elegant backdrop for the procession of browns and yellows that compose the color wheel of Cuban cooking. Almost everything is made in-house, save for the ham croquettes, their uniform shape and precision crackle dead giveaways that they weren’t prepared in a homestyle kitchen.
Advertisement
Lopez no longer patrols the back of the house at Cuba de Ayer, but she has bequeathed the kitchen her recipes, which the cooks follow with military precision, no matter how small the task or large the plate. The fried yuca and tostones, or fried green plantains, are textbook. The former are boiled, then fried, until the exterior is crispy and the interior is as silky as Robuchon mashed potatoes; the latter allow you to revel in even more textures, each soft-crunchy-chewy bite coated in a thin layer of mojo sauce, its garlic right in your face. The appetizer of sauteed shrimp, with or without avocado, finds a way to balance the delicate sweetness of the crustacean with the mushroom-cloud of aromas compressed into its accompanying lemon-garlic sauce.
The entrees are meaty affairs, by and large, each differentiated by cooking technique, protein and subtle variations in spice and aromatics. On one end of the spectrum, you have lechon asado, a lush mass of slow-roasted pork shoulder scented with bitter orange, garlic and cumin, then paired with long, almost translucent strands of softened onion. On the other end, you have vaca frita, this almost dehydrated tangle of shredded flank steak, similar to Bolivian charqui, which releases its hidden juices on first bite, a rivulet of something surprisingly rich and acidic. You can’t go wrong with either.
My lone disappointment here was a red snapper fillet, fried a few beats too long until its flesh was rubbery, not flaky. The calories I saved by ignoring the fish were, on a latter visit, spent on Cuba de Ayer’s housemade desserts. I like the tres leches just fine, but my heart belongs to the Cuban rum cake — an airy sliver of sponge cake shellacked in a Bacardi glaze, at once soft, sweet, crackly and bitter in all the best ways. The treat will take the edge off anything, whether an unfortunate entree or a disagreement with a loved one over picadillo.
Cuba de Ayer
15446 Old Columbia Pike, Burtonsville, Md., 301-476-9622; cubadeayerrestaurant.com.
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, Tuesday through Thursday; 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Monday.
Nearest Metro: N/A.
Prices: $2.75 to $25.99 for appetizers, soups, sandwiches, entrees and desserts.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLOwu8NoaWlqYWR9eHuQcmacrZKWeqWxjJqwnqpdp7K0wMCuqZqmpGK%2FpsLInq5o