For a taste of real Latino cuisine, go where Latinos live and work, like Miami’s Barry University.
If you are looking for ideas for ethnic menus, it always helps to go where those menus will be most prevalent. Most operators can’t afford to travel to the home countries of the cuisines they are seeking to emulate, so scouting out sites in the U.S. is the next best thing.
So, if you’re looking for Latino-themed menu suggestions, you might want to head south, to the Miami area, where Cuban immigrants have had a heavy influence on menu choices. One location to visit is Barry University in Miami Shores, where the foodservice department offers a Latino-laden menu not only to its student customers, but also to the public.
“Due to our diverse student population, we have 35 to 40 Latin-influenced dishes that we offer pretty much on a daily basis,” says Pierre Sierralta, the resident district manager for this Sodexo-managed account.
In the 8,700-student university’s cafeteria, which seats about 450, Sodexo serves students, staff and the public inexpensive, all-you-can eat meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The menu, driven by the diversity of the students, offers American, Italian and Asian selections as well as the Latin fare.
“One of most popular dishes we serve is the Cuban mojo-marinated pork with black beans and plantains,” Sierralta says. “The Cuban population here in Miami is pretty large, so that is one of the favorites that we offer.”
To prepare, the pork is soaked overnight in a citrus and spice marinade, then roasted for close to an hour.
“We also have several students from the [Caribbean] Islands. In our menu cycle we offer dishes like the Jamaican jerk, pork loin and arroz con pollo, which is rice served with Peruvian rubbed chicken,” Sierralta says. “We also serve a carne asada, which is like a beef stew.”
For the carne asada, the beef is grilled and marinated in olive oil flavored with onions, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, cumin and chili powder served with rice and, sometimes, yucca with a vegetable side.
Snacks: “We have some snacks that are extremely popular on campus,” Sierralta says. “We have Cuban pastries, called pastelitos, that are similar to Greek pastries using dough similar to fillo dough. These are stuffed with guava paste or with a cheese that resembles cream cheese.”
The pastelitos are also offered with both a guava and cheese mix.
Jamaican patties are also available. These are pastry pockets filled with either beef, curried chicken or vegetables and can be spicy or mild.
“These are pretty unique; I’ve never seen anything like them,” Sierralta says. “The patties are marked with a red dot if it’s spicy and a green dot if it’s vegetarian. It looks actually like some kind of stamp that’s 100% edible, but it really catches your eye.”
The Jamaican patty is made of a pastry similar to the traditional Latin empanada, and the pocket is stuffed and sealed.
“We offer this other Cuban treat, that is very popular here, called croquettas,” Sierralta says. “They kind of look like a Vienna sausage with breading.”
The croquettas are filled with either ham or chicken and deep-fried. Sierralta says most people eat them plain, but there is always hot sauce and other condiments available.
“One sauce that we offer is our chimichurri sauce,” Sierralta says. “We use that when we serve flank steaks, skirt steaks or the Brazilian steaks.”
The chimichurri sauce is a Latin version of pesto without the cheese. The chunky sauce is made with olive oil, garlic, parsley, sometimes cilantro, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.
International event: Each year on Columbus Day, the resident dining hall holds an event called the United Flavors of America.
“We ask our employees, who come from different backgrounds, to bring a recipe and we purchase the ingredients. Each station in the dining hall will feature an entrée from a different country and the students love it,” Sierralta says. “During last year’s event, of the nine dishes made, Cuba was represented by the medianoche sandwich. The medianoche sandwich is a classic sandwich that had its origins in the ‘40s and ‘50s.”
Medianoche means midnight. This was a popular snack that was made late at night, for people coming from supper clubs, dances or movies. The sandwich is sometimes served cold, but usually it is grilled on a hot skillet—at Barry, they are heated on a panini grill. A sweeter variety of yellow egg bread—similar to Jewish challah bread—is used with a variation of roast pork, ham, pickle slices, Swiss cheese and mustard. The outside of the bread can be brushed with softened butter before grilling. The sandwich is sliced diagonally to make two thin triangle-shaped wedges.
At the international event, the Dominican Republic was represented with sancocho, a traditional stewy soup.
“This is something that you can make with pretty much anything you can get your hands on,” Sierralta says. “You can throw in beef, chicken, pork, carrots, potatoes, peas, celery, anything. Sancocho has its origins in the rural Dominican Republic. It’s really a poor man’s dish that combines whatever is available. I think all cultures have a similar dish.”
Argentina was represented by a churrasco steak sandwich on Cuban bread with watercress, tomato, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper and lime juice topped with shoestring potato fries.
“We served that with the chimichurri sauce on the side and that went really well,” Sierralta says.
Peru was represented by lomo saltado, a dish made with strips of beef sirloin, julienne potatoes, julienne red onions and tomato chunks, sauteed in a red wine vinegar-soy sauce reduction, served with white rice.
The dessert station was represented by Venezuela with a quesillo, which is the Venezuelan version of flan. It translates into “little cheese” though there is no cheese in it.
“The quesillo is something that we offer in our menu cycle and it’s delicious,” Sierralta says. “It’s just your typical flan but with a thicker consistency almost like it’s made with a ricotta cheese. It’s sweet with a dark and dense caramel sauce on top.”