Photo Courtesy: Awatukee Foothills News
In the Foothills of south Phoenix, nestled against the Awatukee side of South Mountain, lies a little bit of Cuba. Well, more than a little bit of Cuba, a whole family, in fact.
Babaloo’s Cuban Café is owned by mother and son team, Robert and Mayra Gonzalez. Yes, Phoenix has a few Cuban restaurants, but this one is actually owned by a Cuban family who really do the cooking and turn out masterful creations.
Inspired by Mayra’s heirloom family recipes, tasty dishes are turned out in a modern expression by Chef Robert. The Babaloo’s experience is a tradition more than a half century in the making, starting in a little town in the middle of Cuba called Esperanza, Las Villas to the narrow escape of the Castro regime to our little part of the globe.
Looking back on her childhood in Esperanza, a small farming town of North Central Cuba, Mayra remembers even outside of holidays, every family get together as a special event, especially growing up as a farmer’s daughter.
Gonzalez family in Cuba
The family turned the task of corn harvesting into a big party. While the men were out in the field, three generations of women were inside the kitchen preparing a huge meal. The sounds of laughter and cooking filled the house, along with the heady cooking smells of onions, garlic and cilantro. Thinking back to all the good times surrounded by family puts a smile on Mayra’s face.
Today, the Gonzalez family continues this tradition but combines a modern twist to some rustic family recipes. Mom calls Babaloo’s antiguo y moderno, Spanish for ‘antique and modern,’ but roughly translated today as old and new. Chef Robert takes the recipes handed down from his great-grandmother and adds his signature modern style and expression to traditional Caribbean flavors. The end result has guests coming from all over the Valley again and again.
“I’m constantly trying to stay current with culinary trends and what is going on in the culinary world,” said Robert. “We don’t want to be labeled an ethnic Cuban restaurant,” he adds. Instead, he wants his heritage and his family recipes to be the inspiration for his own culinary artistic expression. An expression cultivated at the Art Institute of Phoenix.
Which is fine by Mom, but nothing gets past her. She is often referred to lovingly as the Cuban Quality Control Officer. “For the Cuban dishes, I always taste them,” she said. “Sometimes they’ll put in some other ingredient and I’ll say, ‘Wait a minute, this doesn’t taste right. What did you put in there!’”
Expect to find modern twists on favorites like Ropo Vieja (which literally means ‘old clothes,’ in Spanish) which is a braised flank steak, slow cooked with bell peppers, garlic and onions until it begins to fall apart and resemble old clothes.
And diners can routinely be seen falling out of their chairs when they try Mayra’s tres leches cake which is made with a blend of three sweet creams. “I was going to have a bite, but now I plan to lick the plate when no one is looking,” exclaimed one diner. TF
Tomorrow is Veteran’s day and I’ve spent a good part of the day locking down interviews for a client who is handling the character balloons for the parade. It wasn’t until I started filling out the segment sheet that the meaning of the day hit me. Two of his employees are veterans, both brothers, 2 and 3 tours to Iraq respectively and one whose wife is also a marine, served 2 tours in Iraq.
