A New York Flashback

Papa Rudy’s transports diners to old-school NYC Puerto Rican joints 

By Danny Brody

Papa Rudy’s is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Photos by Albert Siegel

Cuchifritos — just the word conjures up memories of sweet-smelling Puerto Rican coffee shops and comidas, chinas y criollas storefronts in the various New York City neighborhoods I haunted. La Caridad on the Upper West Side comes to mind, only because I can still remember the name. I usually spent my dinner hour there when I worked nights for Manhattan Cable. It was my home for wonton soup, ropa vieja and beans and rice, though it took a couple of visits before I understood that I could choose any combination of red or black beans and white or yellow rice. Up to that point, I always just responded by saying, “sí.”

I think El Deportivo on the West Side was my first introduction to mofongo, a dish that consists of mashed plantains with garlic and shrimp (or pork bits), and maybe to my first guanabana (soursop), too. And the Puerto Rican girls … their brown eyes could tear you down, their open faces daring you to meet a challenge with a “move along, pendejo.”
When I lived on Rivington Street, there were Latin joints on three of the four corners at the nearest intersection — one even had several different kinds of flan every day. My favorite was strawberry cheesecake flan. With a large café con leche, it was the perfect junkie’s wake-up at 4 p.m.. If you asked for no sugar in your coffee, that meant you got only two soup spoons’ worth and a roll of the eyes. If you didn’t stop her, the counter lady would rapidly shovel in six, seven, sometimes eight spoonfuls.

Years later, the sign is still there. I walked into Alias, pronounced in Spanish Ah-lee-ahs, and surprised a couple of well-fed yuppie types folding white napkins in preparation for the dinner rush. The coffee machines and sheets of flan were gone and the place smelled of nothing at all. “Is this still Ah-lee-ahs?” I asked, and got a rather pitying look from the two as they exchanged glances, as though confronting a crazy, or perhaps retarded, boy. “No,” the girl replied. “It’s Ayleeus. Like the sign says, Ayleeus.” I guess at that moment I should have been an object of pity, maybe even derision, because my neighborhood — where you had to throw down the keys from the third-floor window to let in your friends, and where a half-pint of cheap DeVille Brandy was always tucked into the back pocket of your jeans for fortification against those acts you were about to commit — had disappeared, and I was the last to know.

Now fast-forward a decade or two to Miami. I don’t know whose “papa” Papa Rudy is, but he’s my daddy now. In Puerto Rican neighborhoods, while the neon sign in the window blinking cuchifritos means Puerto Rican soul food, it also can mean a specific dish, one a grandmother might make to remind her family of their Borinquen heritage. Here, an order of cuchifritos, which in this case is a light stew of pig parts (I’m pretty sure I inhaled some semi-crunchy strips of ears, maws and stomach, and maybe some tongue, too), surrounded by two baked green bananas (con guineo), was perfect for a hot, summer day. I like to sit outside on a stool at Papa Rudy’s and sweat profusely to replicate the tropical weather of Old San Juan, or summer on 115th Street for that matter, and multitask Miami-style to work on my tan. I also order a pastel, which is not sweet, as the name implies (it’s Spanish for ‘pie’); I believe it is made with mashed plantains and maybe malanga, or another root vegetable. There are pieces of pork and chicken inside and some red peppers. The pastel is starchy and substantial, yet also moist and not overly filling. After the first few forkfuls, I poured on some hot sauce and squeezed out a lime wedge.

The cuchifritos were cooked to perfection. The ingredients list for this dish might seem forbidding, and the impression one might get is of a heavy wintry bowl of “mystery meats,” but, honestly, it reminded me of the most delicate French haute preparations of tripe or other variety cuts I have eaten, and I have eaten a lot of innards, my friend — a lot of innards. It’s a homey, country-style dish, but urbane and welcoming, not heavy at all. And then, as I asked for the check, sipping from my Styrofoam container, the five spoons of sugar the waitress had jackhammered into my large café con leche woke me out of my reverie.

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