Plenty of Latin flavor
At a lovely spring lunch, we were talking about all the little neighborhood restaurants suddenly cropping up. One of the guests told me of a new spot recently opened on Pico Boulevard near Sierra Bonita Avenue, just down the street from C.J.’s Cafe.
Posh on Pico is billed as a Latin American restaurant and marketplace. For owner Maricarmen Rodriguez, it’s a labor of love. Born in Honduras and a former division manager for General Electric, she has lived all over Latin America. For this, her first restaurant, she wanted to make the menu truly Latin American. We have lots of Mexican food in Los Angeles, as well as Salvadoran, she says, but not so many restaurants from other areas of Latin America. Her idea is to bring it all together in one place.
It’s a very sweet spot, decorated with funky antiques and paintings of fruits and vegetables in tropical colors on raffia. Rodriguez has hung chandeliers in the window, stenciled a border on the walls and filled a pastry case with La Brea Bakery goods, plus her own brownies and a generous tres leches cake, soaked in three kinds of milk and topped with a frill of whipped cream. She sells Goya brand platano chips popular all over Latin America and her own jazzy cotton napkins, and soon she’ll have ready-made arepa (Colombian corn cake) dough to take out, and other Latin American groceries as well.
At 8 weeks old, the cafe’s menu is a work in progress. For breakfast (served all day), you can opt for huevos rancheros on blue corn tortillas, cinnamon-scented banana pancakes or arepas accompanied by eggs scrambled with caramelized cherry tomatoes.
She’s also got a very tasty Latina burger, half a pound of prime beef mixed with her secret seasonings on a La Brea bun with all the fixings. It’s so popular that she just added a turkey burger. And next week, she’ll be making Cuban-style sandwiches, but like everything here, a little more healthy and lighter than the original. She’s also doing some remodeling in the back to make a space where she can have someone pat out arepas and make tamales. Step by step.
She makes a different agua fresca every day and uses Illy coffee in her excellent espresso drinks. Have a cortado (the equivalent of a macchiato) at the vintage garden table out front.
At dinnertime she lights the candles and serves things like grilled breast of chicken with tamarind sauce over a coconut mashed potato cake, salmon from Chile with a little mojito sauce, and filet mignon with chimichurri. On Thursday nights, she has arroz con pollo, and on Fridays, a seafood stew with a little bit of coconut in it.
Rodriguez is a wonderful, welcoming presence, decked out in dangling earrings and a heap of bangles, cellphone clipped to her waist. This is a big project to take on, but she’s up and running. And though service can be awfully slow, nobody seems to mind, settling in with friends at the long refectory table.
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Posh on Pico
Where: 5542 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
When: 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays; closed Mondays. Street parking.
Cost: Soups, $3.95 to $7.95; salads, $5.95 to $12.95; sides, $2 to $3.50; entrees, $8.95 to $15.95, desserts, $1.50 to $4.50
Info: (323) 931-4338