Yes, it's in a terrible location. After dark you may want to sprint to and from your car. But dinner at La Cantina is worth the run when you feel like inexpensive, tasty Latin food.
This Spanish-Mexican restaurant, located where Torremolinos used to be, has been renovated. The downstairs bar and the upstairs restaurant have a fresh coat of cream-colored paint, decorative plates, Spanish shawls and bullfighting scenes. It would be very appealing if it weren't for the red leatherette dinette chairs.
No matter. The food will make you forget the chairs.
It's an odd menu, to say the least. The owners have even thrown in pizza and chicken parmigiana with spaghetti for good measure. But basically the food falls into two categories: classic Spanish cuisine and such Tex-Mex favorites as quesadillas, enchiladas and burritos. Dinners are served with rice or french fries. (Paella Valenciana with french fries?)
Start with mussels, plump and grit-free, with a luscious, herb-flecked green sauce. Or tiny, flavorful mushrooms stuffed with deliciously seasoned crab meat. The classic black bean soup with diced onion and yellow rice is excellent. Plain cheese ++ quesadillas are enlivened with a dainty bit of chopped lettuce, tomato, guacamole and sour cream.
This isn't fancy food -- we're talking cheap eats here -- but it's presented with style. A seafood stew, jazzed up with a bright sprig of parsley, featured clams (OK, they were a bit tough), mussels, calamari and grouper in a wonderful garlicky sauce.
A New York strip steak, cooked medium rare exactly as ordered, was full of meaty flavor with an intense, winy sauce and lots of sauteed mushrooms. (The same good sauce can be had with chicken.) With the steak came tender-crisp sticks of zucchini and zesty, seasoned yellow rice. Or french fries, of course.
There are several pork dishes on the menu, but I can't recommend them after trying "sliced roast pork with warm tortillas and pico de gallo." The thick slices of pork were so tough they couldn't be cut with a knife. Too bad, because they could have been good wrapped in the soft flour tortillas with the chopped lettuce, tomato, avocado and sour cream that came with them.
As Henry Ford said, you can have any dessert you want as long as it's flan. This is a good, sturdy flan, not junked up with whipped topping and the like. Or finish up with that fine Spanish coffee drink, cappuccino.
The night we were there, service was super. And why shouldn't it have been, when only two tables were filled? But I did appreciate that the waitress asked us -- after they asked her -- if we would mind if the other table smoked. (We said yes.)
La Cantina
Where: 8 E. Preston St.
Hours: Monday to Friday, 11 a.m.-midnight; Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m.-midnight
Credit cards accepted: MC, V
Features: Spanish and Mexican food
Non-smoking section? Yes
Call: (410) 752-5227
Prices: Appetizers: $3.25-$6.75; entrees: $4.75-$12.75
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