A tropical theme with a backbeat of sophistication

The menu at Tropical Caribbean says, “All dishes contain cilantro,” and it’s not kidding. There’s cilantro in the salad, in the paella, even in the fillet of beef.

All this herb-giddy tropical food comes on elegant, unusual plates: white triangles, burgundy octagons, dark blue squares. What we have here is upscale Latin American cuisine, hipper than you’d expect from the room, a tropical-themed Pasadena hole in the wall where the theme is a sporty sun wearing sunglasses.

You want lovely shrimp in a really rich cream sauce with a dash of basil? Ricotta-sweet corn empanadas? A pot of garlic butter (with a little eggplant puree for texture) with your toasted rolls? If you’re cool with rice, black beans and fried plantain as the accompaniment -- and a lot of bamboo and fishnet in the decor -- Tropical Caribbean is the place.

Ecuador-born chef Fausto Alvarez has considerable experience above the mom-and-pop restaurant level -- he’s cooked on cruise ships and at fancy hotels, including the Biltmore in downtown Los Angeles -- but he’s chosen to run a series of Latin American restaurants around town. Back in the ‘80s it was an Argentine place in Highland Park called La Choza. For six years he operated a similar place, Caribbean Treasure, near Pasadena City College.

We can cover the Caribbean part of Tropical Caribbean’s menu pretty quickly. There’s a powerful jerk chicken, with a strong allspice flavor and a deep-set sort of chile hotness. It burns your tongue and perfumes your palate for minutes.

There’s also roast pork of a somewhat Cuban persuasion -- it’s flavored with sour orange juice and a bit of cumin. It may not convert fans of Versailles’ version, but it’s flavorful and very juicy. You can get it as an entree or as an appetizer (hornado de puerco).

At lunch, this roast pork shows up in the exquisito sanduich de puerco, which really is pretty exquisite. The spicy juices soak into the light, crisp roll, and the topping of tomatoes and pickled red onions neatly balances the richness of the pork. This sandwich gives such an impression of richness that I figured, the first time I had it, it was made with mayonnaise too, but in fact it isn’t. (Still, dieters beware: It comes with fragrant fries.)

The rest of the menu is basically pan-Latin American, with little twists. Tropical Caribbean makes good, meaty empanadas filled with beef or chicken, but it also makes one with a refreshing filling of ricotta and sweet corn kernels. Another thing you might not expect in a Caribbean restaurant is cream sauces, but Tropical Caribbean has them. That luscious dish of shrimp in basil cream sauce, shrimp palmera, might be French except for the garnish of roasted peppers.

The topper, though, is the delicious filet mignon with soy-mushroom sauce. That description may not scream Caribbean, but the dish is representative of Alvarez’s cuisine, especially its Continental side. It’s an impressively thick mound of beefsteak, evidently roasted in the oven, covered with a mushroom cream sauce that tastes more of tarragon than of soy. It’s like a cross between beef stroganoff and steak with bearnaise sauce, rich and aromatic.

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Familiarly Latin

Much of the menu is familiar Latin American dishes, such as paella and chicken or seafood in tomato sauce, well prepared but not as original as, say, the filet mignon. On the other hand, the milanesa is novel but not particularly interesting; the breading is mashed plantain, doughy and bland. One night there was a special of goat shank in tomato sauce, more or less a goat osso buco. If birria could be elegant, this is what it would be.

Only fruit drinks are available -- lemonade and a couple of jugos, semifrozen slushes in fruit flavors such as blackberry (mora), passion fruit (maracuya) and naranjilla. The last has a complex tropical-fruit flavor that has been compared to a combination of pineapple, tomato and strawberry. Others taste figs, I seem to find banana. The jugos are refreshing, but wine or beer would be better with a lot of the dinner dishes, so it’s no surprise that some diners bring bottles with them.

The only dessert here is a nice, tender flan with raisins in it, garnished with whipped cream and swags of chocolate sauce. I doubt that anybody comes here for it, though. They come for Alvarez’s sophisticated take on Latin American food -- and maybe all that cilantro.

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Tropical Caribbean Restaurant

Location: 526 S. Lake Ave., Pasadena, (626) 795-0675.

Price: Appetizers, $1.75 to $7.95; lunch entrees, $6.25 to $8.25; dinner entrees, $10.90 to $15.95; lunch specials, $5.95, dinner specials, $9.95; desserts, $5.

Best dishes: Exquisito sanduich de puerco, filet mignon in soy mushroom sauce, jerk chicken, shrimp palmera, jugo de mora.

Details: Open 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, noon to 9 p.m. Sunday. No alcohol. Street parking. All major cards.