A Puerto Rican specialty at De Rican Chef
Tasty discovery: Mofongo a la Criolla with shrimp
Price: $17
Destination: De Rican Chef, 416 Denbigh Blvd., Newport News
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday
More info: 757-278-5365 or dericanchefva.com
Celebrity chef Guy Fieri once described mofongo as “the best fried thing I ever ate.”
High praise from a guy who travels the country looking for distinctive dishes at diners, drive-ins and dives.
Fieri admitted he’d never heard of mofongo until he sampled it at a restaurant in Miami a few years ago. Raquel Rivera Bonilla grew up on the stuff in Puerto Rico, where it is woven into the culture.
It is the specialty now at the De Rican Chef restaurants she operates — one that’s been in Virginia Beach for 14 years, and a new one that opened in Newport News last fall. Mofongo is built around plantains, deep fried and then mashed into a consistency with the thickness of stuffing.
It is critical, Rivera Bonilla says, to chop the plantains to just the right size — chunks between 1½ and 1¾ inches long. Chop them too small or too long and the mixture comes out crunchy and wrong. Get them just right and it flakes easily with a fork, holds its texture and eats very smoothly.
“You have to get the plantains when they’re green,” she says. “They have to be hard and green, a beautiful color. Then we peel it and chop it and we fry it until it turns that pretty yellow color, and we smash it to make it like a paste.”
The deep-fried plantains are mashed using a pestle with a little oil and some seasonings and then molded into the wooden bowl in which they will be served.
The stuffing depends on your taste buds and your price range. On the dinner menu, chicken or shrimp can be added for $15-$17, or octopus, lobster and other seafood for $26-$37. (The lunch menu includes smaller mofongo rellenos portions for $9.50.)
It is offered al Ajillo (with lots of garlic) or a la Criolla (with tomatoes and onions).
The mofongo stuffed with shrimp also includes sliced vegetables in a creole sauce. The other meats — chicken, pork, skirt steak, other varieties of seafood — come with different sauces.
Rivera Bonilla notes with pride on her menu that her mofongo and other dishes are “prepared daily from scratch and cooked to order just like at home.”
— Mike Holtzclaw