It's a celebration of browned flavors, like a heavily fried Mexican machaca , and there's no way to make it without grease flying all over. Let's stipulate that Versailles, thanks to some special occult technique, makes the best Cuban roast pork in town. But Havana on Sunset has the most ambitious Cuban menu and the most sophisticated style. We're in Hollywood here, among the shops that ring the Metropolitan Hotel. There is live Cuban music in the bar on Friday and Saturday nights and a counter selling rum and cigars, those symbols of Cuban high life.
Cuban food has strong roots in Spain, which show here particularly in an exuberant love of garlic.
The standard side dishes are rice, good ham-scented black beans and a choice of fried plantains or slices of yucca root with a squirt of garlic on top. A lot of dishes have a very good spicy tomato sauce, much thicker and more flavorful than you usually find in Latin American restaurants. The appetizers you expect at a Cuban place are chicken or ham croquettes, empanadas filled with ground beef, and fried codfish balls. The most amazing appetizer is the tamal relleno . Yes, it's a Cuban tamale.