Early dinner at Cafe Laguardia

Yes, there has been much discussion of this place, but Mr. Food Nut and I love to stop here on the way home from school for a couple of Sangrias and an appetizer before dinner. Tonite, we decided to stay for dinner.

First, I asked what type of wine they use for the Sangria. The bartender told me that they use a bottled Sangria and add vodka. This explains the killer headache I had after too many a couple of weeks ago. Never, I mean never, have I heard of Sangria made with vodka. I still like it, though. However, after one I'm tipsy, after two, I'm ready for a nap.

We decided on some beef empanadas, queso fundido and a croquetas sandwich. All were VERY good, IMHO. The queso fundido is made with ground beef, not the chorizo I am used to, though I still like it. The corn tortillas were soft and warm. The empanadas were pretty standard. I thought they were fine. Mr. Food Nut loved the croquetas sandwich. It had ham and croquetas. Why, I don't know, since I was only expecting the croquettes. It was good and toasty. I don't mind the fact that they use French bread for their sammies.

I do recommend this place. However, we always go before the dinner crowd. And, we got to pick what we wanted to watch on the several new tvs in the bar.

The queso fundido is the kind of thing that gives me a headache about La Guardia, which, unlike Cafe 28, purports to be Cuban not MexiCuban, a Chicago and LA phenomenon as far as I can tell. There is no such animal in the Cuban repertoire. The Yago and vodka "sangria" sounds a lot worse than you say it is. Sounds like they borrowed a recipe from the Pike house at the University of South Florida.

What makes a great empanada is the bread and the filling. The picadillo in beef turnovers can be flavorless (see Welsh/UPie pasties) or it can be grand. The dough can be like a pastry crust (some Cuban and Puerto Rican recipes, a subset of which uses cream cheese), like the cornmeal crust of Chicago deep dish (Colombian), or like a very thin "Italian" pizza dough (Argentine, Chilean). Notwithstanding the blather on Check Please, El Mercado serves up a good one. I like the dough at Penguin, but the beef stew is a little ALPOish, even for me.

I do give them credit howver for serving a"croquetas preparadas", what you called a croquette sandwich. This is also done with papas rellenas. Often galletas Cubanas (popular with Mexicans, so you'll find several solid Miami brands around town of these very large, dry, lardy crackers (spectacular in soup), around town) are used instead of bread. Chicago and Havana are a little alike in the propensity to make anything into a sandwich, even something that is already breaded.

A friend of mine had a Groupon to Cafe LaGuardia and I had never been before, so we made dinner plans and met at the W. Armitage location.

We ordered the octopus and shrimp ceviche, a cubano sandwich, and "cuban nachos" (not my choice...) with the intent of ordering more depending on how we felt. The nachos were tostones smeared with cheese sauce (or, should I say "cheez" sauce?), gristly beef, mealy tomatoes, and huge mounds of flavorless guacamole. The cubano wasn't properly melted through, lacked mustard, and featured surprisingly flavorless roast pork and ham.

Next up was the ceviche, which was made with tiny canned shrimp. Let me say that again: canned shrimp. I've seen jars of these on the shelf at grocery stores before and always treated them as a curiosity. Why would someone want to eat canned shrimp? Where do they find such tiny shrimp (maybe 1 cm long, if uncurled)? How do they peel them? Anyway... not good. Mushy and devoid of flavor, the shrimp were paired with the tiny, chewy bits of octopus (my companion: "is there any octopus in here?" me: "I think the little chewy bits might be octopus").

Blech.

We decided to cut our losses and head to The Map Room to drink.

Cafe Laguardia
http://www.cafelaguardia.com
2111 West Armitage Avenue
Chicago, IL 60647
(773) 862-5996

-Dan

Cafe Laguardia West, which in my experience was quite a bit stronger than the Armitage location, has closed. Thanks to Marshall K for the tip:

Cafe Laguardia West Has Closed

To all of my family & friends,

I want to tell you all that after 6 wonderful years meeting and greating the most beautiful people in Chicago, my family and I decided to close Cafe Laguardia West and concentrate on our new venture.

Chef Jorge Laguardia

http://www.cafelaguardiawest.com/

Santander wrote:Cafe Laguardia West, which in my experience was quite a bit stronger than the Armitage location, has closed. Thanks to Marshall K for the tip:

Cafe Laguardia West on North Ave may have closed, but Laguardia (West) has opened in the former Brown Sack spot, kittycorner from Weegee's. Laguardia (West) circulated tostones and roast pork at Weegee's one evening as edible advertisement, sure worked on our group. I believe Laguardia (W) is open late on the weekends.

Speaking of Cafe Laguardia, I had a Cuban sandwich from the easternmost, they are both on Armitage, a classic Cuban in every way and one of the better of recent acquaintance. Cafe Laguardia was gearing up for a crush, I had my sandwich around 4:30pm, they had live music that evening and the bartenderess was muddleing multiple mojitos. (say that five times fast)

Cafe Laguardia
2111 W Armitage Ave
Chicago, IL 60647
773-862-5996

Laguardia's Cuban Bistro
3706 W. Armitage Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647
773-772-CUBA (2822)

We went there on Friday night just as they were turning the lights down, and just beat the crowd. Had a glass of pinot and hubby had a good dirty martini with blue cheese olives. We had the beef empanada and the shrimp. The beef was outstanding, the shrimp wasn't good at all. Really fishy tasting in a bad way. The wings were straight out of the freezer with a side of battered fries( I don't know what the deal is with these battered fries, but Mariscos El Veneno on Ashland has the same ones, horrible.)
I had the ropa veja, which was very delicious when the house made hot sauce was added, black beans and yellow rice, were also quite good. Jman had the chicken in hot sauce, which was outstanding but mouth numbing. He had the red beans, which had more flavor than the black. There were some hits and misses. The decor of the place, the really mixed up menu of cuban/mexican/s american is just reallly confusing.

The overall inconsistency of the place has removed it from our rotation. There are just too may places that try harder and succeed.

Cafe Laguardia, which first opened as a small shop before expanding at 2111 W. Armitage Ave., sent a newsletter to fans letting them know that Saturday would be their last day in business at that location.

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140530 ... -elsewhere