The Mango Man also runs an active catering business, and will be happy to stage a Caribbean party for you and your guests, complete with a full Latin menu, an ice cream sundae and smoothie bar, decorations and lights, and a DJ for dancing.
Now he serves from the food cart only at special events around town. After several years operating a food cart on the Capitol Square, he saw the opportunity, four months ago, to expand into this little basement space. He arrived in the United States in 1998, spent two years near family in Reading, Pa., then in 2000 moved to Madison, where other family members lived. Thony Clarke found his way to Madison the way most immigrants have ' through a family connection. The special Costa Rican dinner includes beef or pork, rice and beans, plantains, salad and sauce. My pork empanada was terrific, the pulled pork faintly aromatic with spices, the crust flaky and fresh. The Mango Man does not make every kind every day, but you can call and learn what empanadas will be in the oven on any particular day. The empanadas, encased in the traditional half-moon pastry crust, include veggie, cheese and beef, among others. To my taste, the Monteverde attacks the mouth in a smooth and friendly fashion, while the Mango Man, with a definite peppery character, goes right for the back of the throat.
This salsa is hot enough to enliven nearly any dish, but not scalding enough to cause permanent injury. He hopes eventually to bottle and sell it at the restaurant. It is a red salsa based on habanero peppers, and includes garlic, onions and secret ingredients that the Mango Man declines to divulge. The other, Mango Man salsa, is Thony's very own creation, based on a family recipe. The green salsa, which he calls Monteverde (after Costa Rica's famous cloud forest) is based on jalapeÃo peppers.
Both come with a choice of two homemade salsas, and it is here where the Mango Man shines the brightest. The Caribbean taco is made with a soft-shelled corn tortilla, lettuce, tomato and cilantro, while the Tico burrito is wrapped in a large flour tortilla and served with lettuce, tomato, sour cream and cilantro. Each is offered with beef, pork, chicken or tilapia fish. The tacos and burritos here are very good. Other smoothies include strawberry, banana and pineapple. The chicken was roasted to perfection, just enough food to carry one through the afternoon, especially when paired with a (nonalcoholic) piÃa colada smoothie, which is delightfully fresh-tasting. On this day, the plato del dÃa was roast chicken, a leg and thigh, served with a simple salad with cilantro and, of course, rice and beans. The most popular is the chicken curry, which customers have requested so often that the Mango Man now makes it the daily special two or three times a week. There is always a daily special, and it always costs $6.50. Translated literally, this means 'spotted rooster,' and don't ask me about that one. Locally, rice and beans are called gallo pinto. Still, the Mango Man manages to display most of Costa Rica's typical foods ' mangos, of course, and bananas, coconuts, pineapple, cilantro, plantains and the dish without which any Costa Rican meal would be impossible, rice and beans. In a place this small, the menu is necessarily limited, and wisely so. This is the only Tico corner in Madison, and the only Costa Rican restaurant. And Ticos are what Costa Ricans fondly call themselves. The cafà has a subtitle ' El RincÃn Tico ' which means the Tico Corner. There are a few tables, seating for 10 at the most, a counter for ordering and nonstop salsa music to set the mood. There is not much to remind Thony of sunny Costa Rica in this tiny subterranean bistro near the Capitol, except for a lone potted banana tree, which looks as if it desperately wants to get back home. It's near Tortuguera, a major nesting place of the Atlantic great sea turtle. From LimÃn, in fact, a sleepy town on the Caribbean coast, land of coconuts, mangos, bananas and lemon trees. The Mango Man is Thony Clarke, proprietor of the new Cafà Costa Rica, and he is indeed from Costa Rica. The Mango Man is a one-man show, greeting the customers and dishing up the tacos, all with a big Tico smile. The Mango Man is on the move today, baking a pork empanada, whirring a banana smoothie, taking orders, making change, clearing tables.
0 kommentar(er)
