Good company, a restaurant I've wanted to try for a while, and a cuisine that I genuinely enjoy... Sounds good to me!
Like many other Cuban restaurants, this is a casual dining establishment where the focus is on a good home-style cooking. For a Tuesday night, it's pretty busy, which definitely bodes well for the food that's coming my way.
First up, the obligatory Croquetas. $2.50 gets you two of these tasty treats. Croquetas are deep-fried mashed potato balls with ham in them. Versailles does them just fine. Croquetas can sometimes be overpoweringly salty, but not these. Just the right crunch, lightness, and just a nice ham flavor throughout. Perfect for an appetizer at just two bites each.
At the recommendation of my friend (and the menu), I order Versailles Famous Garlic Chicken. It's a gargantuan serving of half a chicken smothered in a citrusy garlic sauce topped with onions, lots of fried maduros (ripe plantains), white rice, and a bowl of soupy black beans. The chicken is good. Cooked well, the legs and thighs practically fall off the bone, and are succulent. The breast meat is slightly overcooked for my taste, but still edible. Overall, the flavor is fine. If the setting were slightly more intimate, I'd say someone's mom made the chicken especially for me. The rest of the sides are ok. The white rice is a little dry, but it's fine once you spoon some of the tasty black beans over it.
My friend had the Sandwich Cubano, which is described as:
SLICES OF SMOKED HAM AND ROASTED PORK, SWISS CHEESE, SWEET PICKLE AND MUSTARD, SERVED ON CUBAN BREAD - ENTIRE SANDWICH IS THEN GRILLED
I didn't try it, but my friend said it was good.
Overall, I thought the food and service was fine, and the prices were very reasonable. I would go back, but I don't think that I would make a special trip to go that far for me. Unless, that is, I have a hankering to eat something really hard to come by elsewhere like Vaca Frita. Unless I'm really craving something that obscure, there's a perfectly good alternative right in my neck of the woods on Glendale Avenue in Atwater Village.
I've been going to Baracoa Cuban Cafe for about three years now. Like Versailles, it's a casual establishment the serves up good home-style cooking, with generous portions and reasonable prices. Baracoa is a much smaller restaurant than Versailles, and tends to be more quiet/intimate. The decor is bordering on the God-awful, but this is not the kind of restaurant you go for to be dazzled by the million-dollar contemporary art collection. Besides, being LA, there are PLENTY of chi chi restaurants where one can go to for that. You'd go to a place like Baracoa because the food is good and cheap.
The menu is much tighter than Versailles here. The way I look at it, instead of being the Cuban food emporium that Versailles tries to be, Baracoa makes a select few dishes very well. Well enough that a good Cuban-American friend of mine who was visiting from out of town, called over the waitress and told her that the food was every bit as good as he got at Mama's table at home (and of course, he would deny ever having said that if his mother ever were to hear about it).
Having been to Baracoa many times, I've tried many of the items on the menu.
I always start out with the Empanadas. I get one each of the meat and the cheese. The texture of the pastry is flaky without being greasy, and has an almost biscuit-like quality. The meat filling is a traditional picadillo which is a ground beef flavored with green olives, tomatoes, and spices. The way I see it, it's kind of like a less sweet and drier sloppy Joe mixture. Delicious! The cheese is a mozzarella-like white cheese which is very well melted, and slightly sweet.
If it's your first time here, ask if they have Arroz con Pollo available. They almost always sell out this by 7PM, but it's worth it. It's a quarter of a chicken and yellow rice that is just succulent and wonderful. You'll feel like you've gone to Cuba with this one.
If you're wanting something more meaty, go for the Bistec Empanizado. It's a marinated and flattened top sirloin steak that is breaded and deep fried. It comes with black beans and rice, as well as a few pieces of maduros (plantains). It really is a huge plate of food and very reasonable at $13.95.
I almost always order the Tilapia with tomatoes and garlic. The fish itself is quite bland (well, it is tilapia after all) but the tomato-garlic relish is great. A meal for a lighter appetite.
If you're in the Silver Lake/Atwater Village area, this is one place you can't go wrong with. Just don't expect to be dazzled.
On the topic of Cuban eateries, Porto's Bakery on Brand Boulevard in Glendale needs to be mentioned here briefly. All I have to say is this. Go, and now. Great breads and hot foods. I usually go by here when I have a party, and need to supplement the finger foods section. Their Croquetas and savory pies are great (and CHEAP!!!), but the show stopper is their Potato Balls. It's a breaded and deep-fried mashed potato ball filled with picadillo. At 80 cents (!) a piece, I buy a boat load for party nights. You won't find the quality of the breads and cakes you can get here easily, and you definitely won't at the rock bottom prices they charge. Just be patient, and remember to take a number when you enter if you want to be served. :D
Happy Eating!
