La Carreta, Miami, FL

Does anyone speak English anymore in Miami? Everywhere I go, whether it's waiters or hotel staff or even sales staff at the malls, it seems the constant conversational language is Spanish, not English. I'm also running in to people at these places who seem to have limited English skills!

I popped over to Calle Ocho in Little Havana to have lunch at the original La Carreta, a popular Cuban restaurant which is now a small local chain. The hostess must have assumed that I was Cuban, so she gave me the Spanish menu. I struggled with it for a while, but I've forgotten too much Spanish these days, and I had to ask my waitress for the English menu. How embarrassing! Nevertheless, it was good to be back at La Carreta. I've always liked Cuban food. It's so interesting, different, and flavorful, and they do it without having to resort to a lot of jalapeno peppers a la Mexican food.

I had deep fried chunks of grouper fish with a special tartar sauce-type sauce which is herbed and has no pickle relish in it, with a large molded serving of yellow rice and a side of fried sweet plantain. The fish was so good! They deep fry quickly and at a higher temperature than what is typically used for fried catfish back home, so the grouper was just cooked, and it was golden without being brown or burned. The dinner came with a big basket of Cuban bread, which consists of slices of loaves of French-style bread which are then fried in oil and pressed.

For dessert I had flan con coco. Flan, of course, is the Spanish version of a French crème caramel, which is usually denser (more egg yolk) than the French version. The "con coco" means "with coconut," and grated fresh coconut preserved in a thick sugar syrup is piled atop the flan. That was followed by a cafe Cubano—Cuban coffee—which is very similar to an espresso, but made with a different bean and a different brewing technique (it is strong, but doesn't have the harshness or bite of many espressos), and which is also always very very sweet.

As you can tell, Cuban food is *not* diet food!