|
QUICK
LINKS
REVIEW
1
"Versailles feels much like any number of Miami restaurants
that cater to the Cuban community..."
REVIEW
2
"The garlic chicken alone is reason enough to come here,
and is indeed what most diners set out for..."
REVIEW
3
"A casual eatery where splashy, colorful decor and long
waits go hand-in-hand, Versailles -- which makes historical
reference to the period of Cuban prosperity following the
1763 signing of the Treaty of Versailles..."
REVIEW
4
"Versailles is only a heartbeat away from the way Cuba
used to be..."
REVIEW
5
"L.A.'s best, jammed with those who come for the best
broiled garlic chicken imaginable..."
REVIEW
6
"You see, the food here is great, and the portions are
enormous..."
|
|
REVIEW
6
"Viva Versailles"
By William Tomicki
LA Style - 1990
It's
easy to overlook a restaurant like Versailles. Cunningly located
next to Paradise Used Cars in West L.A., it is, in fact, a
Cuban greasy spoon. It's occasionally unkempt but unbelievably
cheap... and always fun. The place is anything but chic. The
décor runs to religious icons, well-laminated maps of Cuba,
and really bad fake brick meeting really bad fake wood paneling.
Cuban Muzak blares from indiscreetly mounted speakers. Ceiling
fans wiggle and turn erratically. Someone has made a stab
at placing flowers on the tables, and in their eternally wilted
state, they actually complement the paper place mats and napkins.
Bu lo, there are 8-by-10 glossies of stars hanging around
the place, all inscribed with words of praise. There's William
Shatner, Loni Anderson, Hilary Edison, Gus Dueñas, to name
a few.
You
see, the food here is great, and the portions are enormous.
Come only when you're really hungry and in the mood to bump
shoulders with crying babies, Latino laborers, punks, middle-class
neighborhood types, and a cop or two, all demolishing huge
mounds of food.
This
place is a great find: Every weekday, there's an irresistible
lunch special for an incredible $2.49-$4. It could be crispy
fried chicken, chopped steak, shredded beef in a zingy tomato,
olive, and onion sauce, or Cuban-style roast pork that is
unbelievably tender. All lunch specials are served with rice
and beans and either French-fried potatoes or a salad.
At
dinner, the mood hardly changes. Plates crash, busboys dash
around, a table goes unattended for 10 minutes. But the dinners
are celestial, a huge menu featuring marinated meats, saffron
rice, and pungent seafood. The Cuban pork ($5.25), steeped
in lime juice with grilled onions, is so tender it falls apart
on your fork. You can splurge on lobster in a special Cuban
sauce ($13.50); the Cuban beef stew( $4.95) is rich and spicy;
the paella Valenciana is light and fluffy. And there are delicious
butterflied shrimp ($7.50) in a big bowl of yellow rice with
peas, green olives, and a hint of sherry. If you can't be
satisfied with all that, there are eight kinds of omelettes.
Most regulars order them with Spanish sausage or plantains.
Every dinner is served with rice and beans, or you can substitute
brown rice and fried or green plantains. Cuban tamales and
fried yucca, as well as several salads, are available on the
side.
In
the beverage department, there's a modest selection of cold
beers and humble wines, both Californian ($6 a carafe) and
imported ($10 by the bottle). But we love the Cuban sodas:
Jupiña (a fizzy pineapple drink), Materva (made from mate,
the dried leaves of a South American evergreen tree), iron
beer, and malta. The batidas, Cuban milkshakes, are another
wonderful surprise, made with banana, mango, papaya, coconut,
or guanabana. The desserts are all priced at $1.25 and each
is appropriately tropical. Although it's hard to imagine consuming
another morsel after all that food, you can choose among grated
coconut meat in syrup, papaya chunks, guava shells. And there
is the mandatory flan - nothing special here because it's
served too cold.
But
at this point, nobody cares. Four of us ate well, had a ball,
drank to our hearts' content, and took food home - and the
entire meal came to $29, including tip.
As
we left this happy place, we asked owner William Garcia why
he named the restaurant after the excessive folly of Louis
XIV. "I didn't," he wistfully replied. "Versailles [three
syllables in Spanish] is a small town in Cuba I was always
fond of."
It's
doubtful that Garcia will ever see Versailles, Cuba, again,
but his L.A. Versailles is a wonderful tribute to the country
he loves.
|
