“We opened on a Tuesday because Tuesday was cheap. Two hundred and eleven dollars in the till at the end of it. I kept the tape.”
Rafael MarchenaWho is eighty-one, and still comes in on Sundays to check the beans
The Marchena family has cooked on Davie Boulevard for thirty-seven years.
Rafael came from Havana by way of Union City. Nilda came from Havana by way of nowhere at all — she flew straight into Miami in 1971 with a suitcase and her mother’s flan tins. They met at a wedding in Hialeah where neither of them was a guest; both were working it.
The restaurant they opened had eleven tables, a rented flat-top and a hand-lettered sign. Two of those things have been replaced.
Plus Marisol on garde manger, Deshawn on the grill, and whoever's cousin needs a summer job.
Cris Marchena
The daughter. Went to culinary school in Miami, cooked four years in a hotel she will not name, came home in 2009 and never left. She writes the board at four every afternoon.
Tono Marchena
The son. He knows what you drank last time. He will tell you the truth about the wait, which is rarer in this business than it should be.
Rafael & Nilda
Rafael checks the beans on Sundays. Nilda makes the flan most mornings and has opinions about everyone's croquetas, including her daughter's.
Hector Ruiz
Dishes, prep, and thirty-two years of knowing where everything is. The only person allowed to touch the walk-in without asking.
You can see straight into it from table six, which was not an accident.
The gravy goes on at nine in the morning. The beans go on at ten. The bread comes at two from a bakery on 441 that has been open since before we were. At four Cris tastes everything, writes the board, and unlocks the front door.
From then until close it is one long conversation shouted across a hot metal counter, and if you sit at table six you get to listen to it.
Off the boat at Pompano
Whatever came in that morning. Which is why the fish on the menu does not have a name on it.
A bakery on 441
Cuban loaves at two in the afternoon, still warm in the crate. We have never bought bread anywhere else.
A stand on State Road 7
Tomatoes, peppers, plantains, whatever herb is cheap and good that week.
Nobody leaves this building hungry, and nobody leaves it a stranger.
That is the whole philosophy, and it is Nilda’s, and she would be embarrassed to see it written down. It is why the portions are what they are, why there is always bread, and why the plain buttered pasta for a small child has never once appeared on a bill.