While I worked at Marvel Comics, I lived at 35 W. 72nd Street in New York, two buildings west of the iconic Dakota, home to celebrities such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Although we never rubbed elbows, we did share a favorite dining spot, Victor’s Café, around the corner on Columbus Ave. and 71st St. Cuban husband and wife Victor del Corral and Eloina Ruiz de Ugarrio had opened Victor’s when I was 15 so that the melancholy Cuban diaspora could celebrate and enjoy its culture. In doing so, they formally introduced Cuban cuisine to New York and made my 22-year-old-self fall in love with it. There’s no denying that my fictional account of Tony Stark destroying a tyrannical monster on behalf of the struggling guerrillas was fueled in part by the flavors served up at Victor’s by proud expats.
How could I have guessed when I wrote that, I would soon befriend Miguel, a Cuban-American photographer who, as a child, escaped the island with his family? A fellow foodie whose family had emigrated to Cuba from the Canary Islands, he took me on a whirlwind tour of Cuban mom-and-pop restaurants in Washington Heights, the Bronx, Spanish Harlem. I loved Victor’s, but this was like going to Grandma’s house every time. I started appreciating the no-nonsense simplicity of Cuban cuisine.
