Getting down to earth with a Havana vibe

IF you’re thinking of heading to downtown Alhambra for a low-key night of mojitos and more, be forewarned: Getting dolled up is not optional. Jeans and flip-flops are off limits at many restaurants and clubs along the busy Main Street, and even baggy chinos can be enough to raise the velvet rope.

Alhambra, you say? Isn’t that a working-class town, Phil Spector’s castle on a hill notwithstanding?

Dress code or no, Alhambra can’t escape its roots, and Main Street’s Cuban corridor doesn’t approach the glam of old Havana- or Cuban-themed Hollywood spots such as Nacional. The young women may be nearly as scantily clad, but the west San Gabriel Valley is not a mother lode for supermodels. The vibe at the local cigar lounge is more frat house than gentlemanly.

Yet the down-to-earthness of the Main Street scene can be refreshing if the big city has started to seem too depressingly hip. The refurbished buildings of Alhambra’s old business district are a locus for what might be termed Latin Lite -- Latin food, music and customs loosely interpreted, the main objective being not authenticity but a good time.

The Main Street restaurant Cuban Bistro plays this philosophy to the hilt on its website, offering “timid guests a safe ethnic dining experience as well as dishes that will excite the more uninhibited diner.”

The dining room on weekend nights is filled in seemingly equal measure with both types shoveling down rice and beans as a Cuban band plays in the next room. Prices are only a few dollars less than what you’d pay farther west, but the budget-conscious can also forgo alcohol and split a main dish to keep the tab from soaring past the half-century mark. Fortunately, Cuban food is filling, and half an order of roast chicken or lechon asada goes a long way.

Latin isn’t the only option on Main Street. Restaurants vary from Italian to French to Chinese, and a blues band plays next door to a club with a techno soundtrack. But if you make it an all-Caribbean night, the next stop after Cuban Bistro is either salsa dancing in the Granada’s spacious ballroom or drinks in the smoke-filled haze of Havana House Cigars & Lounge.

Havana House on a Friday night, with its standing-room-only crowds and salsa blaring from the stereo, may not be the ideal place to enjoy a leisurely cigar -- or a mojito, which turns out to be a rum and soda with a few token mint leaves tossed in. The trick to enjoying yourself is to order a beer and stop wishing it were more like Havana. And that’s not a bad motto to live by.

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The tab

Dinner for two $25

What: Papas rellenas, fried plantains, lechon asada at Cuban Bistro, 28 W. Main St., Alhambra, (626) 308-3350

Drinks and cigar $27

What: Two mojitos and a Dominican at Havana House Cigars & Lounge, 133 W. Main St., Alhambra, (626) 576-0547

Total $52