Unsolved Mysteries of the (Foodie) Universe

Mystery Number One: With more than half a million Cubans living in South Florida, why is it almost impossible to find a cheap, decent dish of ropa vieja?

Or, for that matter, a plateful of Cuban-style pulled roast pork for under a tenner? I'm talking about the kind of joint where you turn up at any old hour, slide onto a stool at the counter, plant elbows firmly, and after a few minutes find yourself gazing, with something approaching unconditional love, at a plastic plate piled with shredded meat and black beans and emitting sweet and sour vapors of cumin and tomatoes, of sautéed green peppers and deeply caramelized onions. A place where there's a wedge of lime and a bottle of hot sauce within reach. Some yellow rice flecked with peas and a sweet plantain or three. And yesssssir, a cold beer.

Cuban restaurants in Palm Beach and Broward fall into two categories: yummy and sort of ritzy (my favorite of these is Mario's Catalina, in Lauderdale) or cheap and crummy (most obviously, Havana and Don Ramon in West Palm). During a couple of decades of poverty — the long years I spent pawing through every pants and jacket pocket in my closet for spare change — I ate a lot of yellow rice and beans and plantains from Havana's 24-hour window, and I swallowed a good number of guava-cheese pastries and café con leches at Tulipan a couple of miles north. None of the dives I frequented turned out a really fine empanada — which, when fresh and flaky, is one of my top ten reasons for living. Nor anything else I could afford beyond greasy, fried pork chunks and watery chicken. A good Cuban ropa vieja is the kind of belly-warming, deeply satisfying peoples' food that should be the inalienable right of every starving student and penniless hack in South Florida.

Ironic, then, that I've finally stumbled upon the place I've been mooning after all these years, only it's run by Italians. The Crazy Cuban II opened a couple of months ago on East Boynton Beach Boulevard. Sam Mancuso and Bill Brogna also own Crazy Cuban I, a hole in the wall in Juno Beach. The new venture is a little bigger, with about a dozen tables and a bar perfect for elbows that faces the kitchen window so you can study Mancuso plating up your picadillo or whatever. It's bare-bones, brightly lit, and staffed in the evening by an adorable Peruvian waitress who can barely contain her enthusiasm for the combination of lime juice, hot sauce, and pulled pork. Mancuso told me he and his partner learned to cook from a Cuban guy who owned a local restaurant; then they took his recipes and played with them until they did him one better. I've had both the pulled pork dinner ($9.95, or $6.95 for lunch) and the ropa vieja ($11.95, or $7.95 for lunch), and I think they've just about perfected their individual versions of these classics. The pork is chewy and gently sour from being marinated, emanating whiffs of cumin. The black beans have a nice puckery note of vinegar and a great, silky mouth-feel; the yellow rice is pretty; the plantains are melting and sweetly caramelized. The ropa vieja isn't shredded, as some are, but the steak is cut into toothsome strips, then simmered gently in a spiced tomato sauce with bittersweetly mellow green peppers and onions. Both these dinners come with a full basket of warm, grilled, gently oiled pan Cubano.

Other specials include ground meat picadillo ($9.95), fricasseed roast chicken ($8.95), and marinated deep-fried pork chunks ($9.95). Then there are a whole bunch of foot-long cold subs, stuffed with chicken salad or tuna or classic Italian cold cuts (all $5.95), or hot sandwiches like the Cuban ($5), media noche (on egg bread, $4.75), grilled steak ($6.25), pulled pork ($5.95), or meatball sub ($5.95). The classic deep-fried Cuban stuffed potato balls, another staple from my days of poverty, are $1.50 each.