A World in a Banana Leaf

There was a time, in my earliest 20s, when my only clearly articulated ambition was to have eaten at least once at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard, starting with a taqueria at the downtown end and working my way methodically westward toward the beach. It seemed a reasonable enough alternative to graduate school, though, of course, my parents had other ideas. (I never did make it as far west as Century City.)

Each day after work, I would walk to the next restaurant on the street and eat dinner, doubling back only to pick up lunch counters that were closed after 2 p.m. or on Tuesdays, then catch a bus the rest of the way home. When I felt particularly behind--new places would open almost as quickly as I could catch up with the old ones--I might buy a taco at one restaurant, a hamburger at the next and ripe, sliced mangoes at a third.

I especially liked the new Central American neighborhood that had sprung up between Vermont and the Harbor Freeway, thousands upon thousands of Guatemalans and Salvadorenos who crowded Pico until dark, choosing toys from big displays set up in grocery-store parking lots, buying mayonnaise-smeared ears of corn from street-corner pushcarts. The restaurants in that neighborhood were good too, and I learned to eat everything from marinated octopus to the griddle-baked Salvadoran corn cakes called pupusas , which were served with a spicy cabbage slaw I adored, curtido . And my favorite place for a while, the first one of these I returned to, was a small Nicaraguan restaurant called El Nica, which specialized in tamales and a spicy marinated pork thing called chancho . (The only Nicaraguan dish I’d heard of up to then was the stew bajo de res , which with my limited Spanish I translated as “low meat.” I was not eager to try it.)

Anyway, I started going to El Nica again a few weeks ago (although never after dark). It’s a clean, simple place with lavender walls, oilcloth table covers and big jars of curtido on the tables. And though the place seems to have been bought by Salvadorans--the “PUPUSERIA” on the sign outside is printed in letters about twice that of those spelling out the name of the restaurant itself--the cooks here still do some of the Nicaraguan dishes I love. Maybe those Nicaraguan planes they thought were transporting arms over the Gulf of Fonseca to El Salvador were carrying recipes instead. (Most of the specifically Nicaraguan stuff is listed on the third page of the menu under the heading “ Combinaciones .” The rest of the dishes are pretty much standard Salvadoran: good pupusas ; thin steaks smothered with onions; beef-foot soup and the like.)

The cornerstone of Nicaraguan cooking is the nacatamale , a brick-size package that’s less a tamale than a world view steamed in a banana leaf, and it’s worth calling before you head down, to make sure the restaurant hasn’t run out. The masa is moist and fluffy, subtly tinged with citrus, spiked with olives, prunes, meat, potatoes and about half a dozen other things--the flavor shifts from sweet to salt every couple of bites or so. El Nica serves it with thick, hand-patted corn tortillas and a huge jar of pickled onions spiced with chile and a jolt of fresh oregano. At $3.50, it’s all the dinner you’re going to need.

Vigoron --tart yuca and cabbage salad strewn with chunks of crunchy fried pigskin, another famous Nicaraguan dish--goes splendidly with beer, but the clay-like texture of yuca might be something of an acquired taste. Pescado estilo tipitapa , a whole fried mojarra done in the style of Tipitapa, a town near Managua, is tasty, topped with a delicious saute of tomatoes, onions and peppers that’s slightly astringent against the crisp, salty fish. Chancho is pork marinated in sour orange juice and what tastes like Worcestershire sauce, fried until the whole thing caramelizes, and garnished with splendid fried sweet plantains: greasy and salty and sweet and spicy, everything wicked you could want from ethnic food.

Waitresses here don’t really speak English, but a judicious combination of pointing and pantomime is usually enough to get what you want . . . the drawback being that while they’ll make you get terrific stuff such as the rice-and-bean dish gallo pinto (it means “spotted rooster”) or the tremendously refreshing drink chia made with slippery seeds, you’ll have to figure out for yourself what they are.

El Nica, 2212 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 480-8531. Open daily, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Beer and wine. Cash only. Dinner for two, food only, $7-$15.