[Pigging by Wilfrid: October 8, 2o14]
What a delightful place. La Caye, a spick little bistro just across the road from BAM, looking at a glance like a little outpost of France. Only in the sense, I suppose, that Haiti was once a little outpost of France.
Until Toussaint L'Ouverture and the triumphant black Jacobin revolution. Which may seem like some irrelevant history, but history hangs heavy over Haiti.
The nation, endlessly roiled by man-made and natural disasters, has a reputation as a poor and dangerous place. Touching, therefore, to see the pride with which staff, and the many Haitian customers, regard this little jewel of Haitian culture and cuisine. It's easy to get into conversation here, and speaking with a Haitian entrepreneur and long-time New York resident at the bar I learned that the relative dearth of Haitian restaurants in the city--despite the large and growing Haitian community--has a lot to do with assimilation. Haitians? We eat American food, he told me. We're everywhere, but we blend in.
Nevertheless, he was emphatic in his praise of the traditional Haitain dishes which La Caye does so well.
Sharing the island of Quisqueyana with the Dominican Republic, Haiti draws on ingredients commonly found in Dominican cuisine. Plantains, yucca, and rice, with pork garnishes, and seafood when available. The conch, a kind of large sea snail--for those who haven't eaten it, the flesh is more like an octopus or squid than a garden snail--is eaten throughout the Caribbean.
The appetizer lambi boukannen--grilled lambi--is unmissable here. Chargrilled and smoky chunks and strips of lambi fresh piled high on the plate; on the side, a bright, spicy mango sauce for dipping.
Thanks, presumably, to a more direct African influence, Haitian food, unlike Dominican food, is heavily invested in spices, and spiciness. This was noticeable in the "fritay," which aside from its flavor profile, and the spiky heat of the slaw, could have been a plate of Villa Mella delicacies.
You can make beef or tilapia the central focus of your fritay, but the traditional way to go is with griot--hunks of pork which manage to be both moistly fatty and crispy at the same time. In other words, the best chicharrones you're likely to find (other than at Bar Boulud, where they're called "rillons").
Joining the party, big slices of fried plantain, crisply coated malanga (much the same thing as yautía, I believe--if you think yucca fries, you won't be far off), rings of red onion, and the hot-stuff slaw.
The fritay is a big plate of food for $13, although I was warned to get the djon djon (black rice) too next time. The lambi is one of the more expensive menu items--$14 for the appetizer, $29 stewed in creole sauce--but there are chicken and pork chop mains in the teens too. BTG, there are Rieslings and suitably lusty Argentinian and Chilean reds in single figures.
Service, charming; ambience, delightful. Here's the website.
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