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A standard butter croissant was a bit flatter than I remembered. That, a ham and cheese croissant and a chocolate twist pastry were more flaccid than flaky. My biggest surprise during recent Porto’s trips has been in the breakfast department.
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A torta with chopped bits of well-done steak tastes like a good carne asada taco that wandered onto a French roll. But a chicken torta, overwhelmed by guacamole that spills out of the sides on first bite (I’m not sure I’ve ever complained before about getting too much guacamole on anything) doesn’t really move the needle. The guava cheese strudels, or Refugiados (“refugees”) are probably the next logical step in any visit to Porto’s, after the potato balls. Flaky pastry, as light and buttery as any viennoiserie in the city, shelters a mixture of tangy, soft cheese combined with the bright, tart fruit. It’s a Caribbean-meets-Continental-Europe mashup that makes Girl Talk look like a rank amateur. “I lived with an aunt who liked to do cakes and pastries,” Porto said in Spanish, recalling her early memories of food.
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Following her death, I wrote an effusive appreciation of Rosa Porto and the business she created. But I was curious recently about how Porto’s has sustained its menu, now slightly pared down three years into COVID, without its matriarch. It started with a French bread here, a chocolate mousse there, and experimenting with the formats of the cakes. The potato ball is as good a place as any to start when talking about Porto’s.
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I never leaned on Porto’s much as an early-morning option, but I can now pronounce it to be one of my favorites in the city, especially given the increasing dearth of daytime eateries since the pandemic struck. Between 1965 and 1973, Freedom Flights brought hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees to the shores of the United States. They relocated to California, where her husband, Raúl, had family. It didn’t take long for Cuban immigrants in the States to start asking Porto for her cakes. “In the airport when we arrived,” she said, she was approached by someone from home.
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A menu as vast as that at Porto’s — more than 100 bakery items, and dozens of sandwiches, soups and salads — would be worrisome at most places. To make an analogue, the pan-Asian bistro that serves Thai food and Chinese food and sushi never does much of it well. Whether it’s the flaky croissants or the cheesecake or the Cuban sandwiches, it’s all delicious, nearly without exception. Instead of narrowly specializing, Porto’s tries to be all things to all people — and, largely, it succeeds.
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An egg, cheese and chorizo sandwich on a crusty white Cuban roll, with a fluffy-egged omelet dotted with spiced meat, is exactly what you want in a breakfast sandwich. Porto’s version of a breakfast burrito is pleasantly hearty, a tortilla-cloaked omelet stuffed with chunks of seasoned, shredded pork, black beans and guacamole. A punchy, persuasive salsa verde goes perfectly with the wrap and allows it to thread the needle and avoid the trap of being too heavy. Torrejas, or Cuban French toast, are over-the-top rich, fat slabs of eggy, fried toast. The guava syrup accompaniment offers a lighter touch than your standard maple syrup, but every bite feels luxuriant, like the chip crumbs from the bottom of the bag.
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They knew they’d have to sell more than the cakes Porto had been baking in Cuba. To build up day-to-day business and foot traffic, they started selling Mexican conchas, doughnuts — whatever people wanted. But the refugiados (guava and cheese pastries) and cheese rolls, with their tangy, creamy fillings, remain excellent, as does a spinach feta empanada. Other empanadas and meat pies are decent but unremarkable, and the tamales are topped by those at some Latin American bakeries around town. The first thing you’ll notice at any Porto’s, at nearly any time of day, is the chaos. Dining room packed, food runners dodging those lurking to nab the first empty table, and of course, the impossibly long line, 40 or 50 deep.
To eat one is to truly grasp the concept of positive reinforcement in behavioral psychology. To eat one is to see the potential of what shepherd’s pie could have been. At Oporto Fooding House & Wine in the Fourth Ward, you can expect Portuguese food and crisp cocktails in a warm and airy environment. If you’re dining solo, grab a spot at the marble countertops shiny enough for an HGTV cameo, order some roasted chorizo and peppers, and sip on a sweet caipirinhas stuffed with lime. With some of the viennoiserie and other baked goods, I find myself in the position of having to walk back some of the praise I ladled on in my 2019 appreciation.
They are divine racquetball-sized orbs of fluffy mashed potato filled with a picadillo spiced meat mixture laced with onions, peppers and what tastes like just a hint of olive and cumin. The balls are coated in breadcrumbs and fried to a deep, tawny brown. The mild crunch of the exterior yields to the silky potato-y mass, only to reward further with tender meat and mild gravy.
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After the Cuban Revolution, “Everything changed,” she said. “When you requested to leave, they fired you from your job.” Families that asked to leave the country were marked as enemies of the state — they were called worms, or traitors to the revolution. People lost their jobs, possessions and some, like Porto’s brother, perished in work camps. “Because there were neighborhood committees.” These “committees” rooted out possible subversion — subversion like owning an illegal business.
Porto’s has become its own language, to the extent that its baked and hot foods no longer just represent Cuba — they’ve come to represent Los Angeles. Roasted pork and ropa vieja come in both sandwich and entrée form. I would recommend the latter, as you get a side of rice and black beans as well as a few tender, gently caramelized maduros, or fried plantains. They’re developed, mature, tasting of onion, bell pepper and a hint of tomato. You’ll be forgiven for thinking this dish is a Jules Verne novel — there are depths to these beans. “In the beginning,” Porto said, “we made bread.” Porto and her husband (who worked the night shift at the now-defunct Van de Kamp’s bakery), opened their first bakery in a strip mall in Silver Lake with a bank loan.
The Saturday-at-Disneyland-like crowds and long queues of people waiting to get pastries, sandwiches and snacks can be off-putting to the uninitiated, certainly. Because the second thing you notice at any Porto’s is how quickly the line moves. Porto’s desserts are as famous, if not more, than anything else on its menu.
She lived with the aunt for several years after her father died at a young age. These memories, and recipes from her grandmother, would inspire her once she began her own business. It’s the reason Porto’s has continued to thrive, well into its fifth decade of existence — an extraordinary feat for any restaurant. And it ensures that you’ll keep seeing people trotting those boxes and bags through airports across the nation. I was fortunate to conduct one of Rosa Porto’s final interviews before she died in 2019 at age 89. She told me about her hometown of Manzanillo; her love of ajiaco, a rustic soup popular in Cuba; and inspiration gleaned from years living with an aunt who loved baking and her grandmother’s recipes.
You generally fare better with the cream-focused cakes and desserts, like the flaky Napoleon or tres leches cake, which feels like plunging into a kiddie pool of sweet milk and sopping wet sponge. Tangy mango and guava mousses, electric jolts of mouth-puckering tang and sweetness, also are worthy of a splurge. Carrot and Parisian chocolate cakes and a mixed berry muffin offer somewhat less to write home about. Other sandwiches, including a marginally spicy chicken milanesa, with a flat, crunchy fried cutlet and melted mozzarella, are also good, if not quite at the same level.
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