Home is where the salsa is: Chef Guadalupe
Hernandez, left, and
daughter/waitress/manager Theresa
Silvernale. (KATHLEEN CEI PHOTO)
Guadalupe la Poblanita
48 Middletown Ave.
New Haven, phone: 865-4540
A TASTE GROWS IN FAIR HAVEN by Mimi Coucher 2/20/97
When you see it off the highway, it looks like a twinkle of hope in a
bleak landscape, like a happenin' juke joint on the wrong side of
the tracks in a movie about a place that never was. Maybe it's the
contrast that makes it so appealing. The little housy spot with
cheerful lights, growing like a wildflower in a grey wasteland of a
half-dead industrial strip. It's on Middletown Avenue, somewhere
between the Rte. 80 exit and the turn-off to the clogged back yard
of New Haven's State Street. An area you'd never pay attention to
if it weren't for the fact that, in between the tired industry of an
exhausted neighborhood, sustenance can be found.
The restaurant is called GUADALUPE LA POBLANITA. It's very small, but
its parking lot is very full, with cars nuzzling the north wall and lining
up on either side of the street. Inside, there's brightness and
language, voices bouncing Spanish off of a ceiling hung here and
there with hats and other badges of a Mexican heritage. There are
shiny, Formica-topped booths and tables and stand-up coolers
filled with Mexican and Milwaukean beers, cans of juices squeezed
from other lands and bright green bottles of strange sodas.
Sonny, Sass and I find a place to park and walk in, but the place is
crowded, there's nowhere for us to sit right away. We hover
uncomfortably near a rustic pole, and within minutes a cheerful
woman with dark hair and an air of authority tells us it's busy, so
busy, but she'll have a table for us in just a moment. She's true to
her word. We're soon sitting in a vinyl booth and watching her
work the room, taking orders and bussing tables with the help of a
cart on casters. We're amazed at how smoothly she switches from
Spanish to English, sweet-talking a crew of surly boys with earrings
in their noses, then soothing an eager family with teenaged kids.
She brings a check to one table, menus to another, delivers dishes
to this one, beers to that one. She's the only person working in that
room, and we're impressed with how well she manages the crowd.
She's very apologetic about our menus. There's a whole front
section offering soft tacos, burritos and more, and they're so
inexpensive that we can only imagine they're tiny side dishes. She
explains that they can be ordered with rice and beans, to make a
meal. She also says that the "sopa" section is sold out, and I
mentally cross out tantalizing soups of chicken and vegetables, beef
and barley, which are priced in the $5 range and so seem like main
meals. She also tells us, with a worried rise of her eyebrows, that
most of the entrées are gone, including the oven-roasted goat that
Sass has had his eye on.
We don't quite know what we're doing, so we order tons of stuff.
Chile rellenos, spicy pork tacos, a thin steak with onions and
peppers, little Mexican pizzas and more, much more. The kitchen is
fast and they soon land on our table, plate after plate, along with
warm flour tortillas and a bouquet of salsas--green, orange,
red--served in tiny Dixie cups.
So much food, so much fun, so little money. We three feast on
yellow rice and refried beans, sliced steak, seasoned chicken and
melted cheese. We pair our proteins with lettuce and salsas, rolling
small concoctions into tortilla surprises. We try everything, in every
combination, until we give up, push our plates away and sink back
into our cozy booth, feeling very fed, very satisfied.
For the next hour, back at the Red Room, the feast of GUADALUPE
LA POBLANITA seems to expand in our bellies. We sigh, we cry, we
wonder how we could have gone so overboard. But we also
appreciate what we've found: an inexpensive, friendly place full of
cheer that has brought warmth and sustenance not only to us, but
to a forbidding neighborhood.
