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Review By Eric Asimov
...authentic home cooking lives on in New York restaurants, serving the same purpose it did 65 years ago: satisfying the longings of people far from home. Now, the newcomers are mostly immigrants who go to restaurants to find home. For everybody else, these restaurants offer wonderful opportunities to taste home cooking as it might be in homes vastly different from their own.
One such restaurant is La Fonda Boricua in East Harlem, a handsome little place that offers big helpings of excellent Puerto Rican home cooking. La Fonda Boricua, which essentially means Puerto Rican Diner, used to be a narrow counter, so anonymous that it operated for several years under an old sign, Gina y Gorge. But this year, the owners, Jorge and Roberto Ayala, acquired the store next door and expanded.
La Fonda is now a spacious place with exposed brick walls, plants and comfortable seating for 75. The walls are filled with paintings, from artists like Fernando Salicrup, Marcos Dimas, and Jose Morales.
...While that is enough to draw you in, the food makes you want to stay, like a mellow octopus salad ($10), in which tender pieces of meat are mixed with cubed peppers and onions, cilantro and a lightly peppery vinaigrette. Chicharrones of pork ($6) is another such dish -- chunks of pork, each with a crisp layer of skin, a glistening line of fat over tender meat. Each bite is superbly flavorful and incredibly rich. Chicharrones of chicken ($6) is Caribbean fried chicken, crisp and greaseless, with each piece seemingly offering its own flavor.
Pork dishes include roast port shoulder ($7), full of garlic and pepper with pieces of crisp skin tossed in and chewy, satisfying baked pork chops ($6) smothered in onions. Steak ($6), marinated in tangy citrus juice and pounded thin, is remarkably tender and also comes covered in onions. Arroz con pollo ($6), classic Puerto Rican dish of flavorful, slightly smoky chicken surrounded by yellow rice, is also satisfying...
...While La Fonda has grown considerably since its takeout days, the menu has not, although Jorge Ayala says he plans to add appetizers and dessers when he gets his wine and beer license. Meanwhile, La Fonda offers numerous worthwhile smaller plates, like crisp tostones ($2), or green plantains, served with a frothy citrus and garlic dipping sauce, and rice with a choice of several kinds of beans ($3). I'm partial to the plump and earthy red beans, but I've also enjoyed smaller pink beans, black beans and even chickpeas.
The service is extremely friendly, but if you need something chances are you'll have to get up from your table and find somebody to get it for you. Come to think about it, it's sounding more like home all the time. |
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World-renowned Puerto Rican artist, Antonio Martorel, works on an inaugural installation at La Fonda, still on display today.
La Fonda Boricua is featured on an episode of the Food Network's 'On The Road With Al Roker.' |
