Holy Empanada!

O, mi Pambiche.  Portland's best Cuban restaurant, and possibly one of its best restaurants in any genre, fed us dinner tonight.  At about 73 degrees, it was a real scorcher in P-town today, and, biking home from work Adam and I had the lightning bolt of inspiration to heighten the sense of summer and visit the vivid green, purple and yellow building that houses Pambiche.  During the nine months of the year that it's miserable outside, the two long rows of tables lining the sidewalks lie frustratingly empty, cutting the capacity of the restaurant to a mere fraction of what it could be in the warm weather.  The reason I say frustrating is that the turnout for fantastic Cuban food remains unvaryingly high throughout the year, causing the wait for one of the five or so tables inside to stretch, at times, to an hour and a half.  But this evening, the colorful picnic tables were abuzz with scantily clad and sufficiently hip Portlanders, who, like us, thought some empanadas and sangria were pretty much essential on a Saturday like this.  With more places to sit, we sat easily.

Sangria.  Two options, white or red.  I chose white because I had just biked from the Pearl and needed refreshment, as well as intoxicant, and didn't figure red wine would be as cooling.  I chose well.  My strapping Cubano server brought a full pint glass of something that looked like lemonade, only bedecked with such equatorial produce as a large sprig of mint, a lime, and a sugar cane stalk.  I grunted and started chomping on my sugar cane with rather less than ladylike formality, and then slurped down a fruity, wine-y, tropical vacation in a glass that, upon closed eyes, brought forth visions of silly-blue seas and white rocky beaches with an unclothed Javier Bardem sprawled...

Ok, ahem, so we orded the Puerro Empanada-- I guess you could describe it as the Latin version of a calzone, only deep fried for that extra buttery flakiness.  The Puerro was filled with a creamy, heavenly leek and cheese mixture and came adorned with a juicy beet salad (and these guys aren't afraid to mix beet greens with the ruby roots-- a wise move, in my view) and four thick-sliced, deep-fried plantains.  And then we got the Pescado con Coco-- a piece of white fish (that I felt could have been bigger, but maybe I'm thinking from the American perspective, where one serving of  restaurant food here could feed a developing country's family for a week) that was stewed in this creamy coconut sauce, flavored with peppers, onions, herbs and spices.  Mio Dio, it was near perfect.  Black beans and rice on the side.  At $7.75 for the Empanada, and $9.50 for the fish, it was a sweet, sweet deal.

I've been there three times now, and haven't yet ordered dessert, though I swear I will next time.  They have one of those cases filled with such things that make you press your nose against the glass in wonder.  Individual-sized pineapple-upside-down cakes with toasted coconut siding, three-tiered Tres Leches cakes, enormous chocolate rectangles named Aleman (presumably, after their resemblance to German chocolate cake), and other treats too ornate and amazing to recall right now.

There will probably almost always be a wait at Pambiche, and they deserve it.  But if you time your visit wisely, you don't need to do time for your plantains.  Just head out around five on a warm afternoon-- the rush is an hour or so away, and all the tables are open and turnover is high.  That sangria is meant to be drunk outside anyway.