When I was a kid, I thought nothing seemed cooler than being a regular at a restaurant, except the way Ken Griffey Jr. swung a baseball bat. When I realized I was never going to casually mash 400-foot home runs with a backwards hat on (despite my best efforts that continue to this day), I resolved to do the next coolest thing. Every time the family went out to dinner, I pitched the casual, big-plate Mexican joint Alegria in Silver Lake. Before long, I walked in to a warm welcome from familiar faces who knew my usual order, my preferred agua fresca, the latest middle school drama, the fitness of the family dog. It felt good and served as a lesson in the value of supporting places that you love.
That said, I did eventually fall out of regularity
at Alegria: when it closed in 2015 I was nonetheless distraught. It was the loss of a cornerstone of my childhood and a flashing neon sign of the erosion of Silver Lake as it existed around the turn of the millennium. After Alegria’s two-decade run, the restaurant space that housed it has changed hands several times in the last 11 years. It was Trois Familia, then Eszett, then Ruby Fruit, and now, as of March, it is the modern Afro-Caribbean restaurant Amiguita.
Amiguita comes from chef Alejandro Eusebio, best known for Cascabel and Sweetsalt in Toluca Lake, two mainstays of the television production industry meal circuit. Here, however, Eusebio has the opportunity to explore the cuisine of his Dominican heritage and to incorporate his training in Cuban and other Caribbean cooking. Mara Herbkersman stays on from the Ruby Fruit days as general manager and beverage director. Herbkersman and the Ruby Fruit’s relationship with the local queer community ended on something of a sour note, to say the least, and it remains to be seen how Amiguita will be received by folks who lived through that history.
Each restaurant had different ambitions, but I find myself intrigued by Amiguita — it feels charming, casually romantic, and comfortable inside, with an inventive menu that’s unique for the area and features great snacks (think yuca latkes and duck confit hoe cakes). It has all the markers of a neighborhood drop-in restaurant (something exceedingly rare, as my colleague Hilary Pollack noted recently), the kind of place where I want to be a regular again.
To some, it may still feel a little too nice, too moody, or too sceney to become a fixture in the rotation. But the best dishes at Amiguita — chicken wings, the easy comfort of the Haitian-style rice and beans dish diri ak pwa — reveal an earnest approachability that makes it an appealing destination for a variety of occasions, whether that’s an intimate catch-up, date night, or a wine and snacks pregame before you turn up at Seco. If you stick to the snacks section, you can make an affordable smorgasbord with a group, or keep it lighter at the top and splurge on one of the larger main plates, whose prices range from $26 to $56.
On the menu
- Yuca latkes are an obvious winner — it turns out that if you fry disks of just about any starch, it’s going to be good. The accompanying apple sauce hums with subtle warming spices.
- Chicken wings glazed with guava and habanero get a turn in the charcoal oven, arriving in a sticky pile fragrant with char. They feel like an homage, or at least a reference, to the charcoal-grilled wings that were a star at Eszett. While these are pleasantly sweet and tart with guava and the charcoal crackle adds a sharper edge, I wish the habanero smacked instead of prickled.
- Find unique Afro-Caribbean touches threaded throughout the main course dishes, like plantain gnocchi bathed in deep yellow Nigerian curry. The gnocchi have a wonderful smushy chew, and the creamy caramelization of the plantains melds well with thick, gingery curry.
- The sides are a little hidden at the bottom of the menu, but don’t overlook them: diri ak pwa is a Haitian-style bowl of rice and kidney beans, a hearty, familiar dish that crosses cultural lines. It’s also a good vehicle to sop up stray dollops of guava-habanero wing sauce or Nigerian curry that linger on your plate. Other sides are more enticing than their position in menu footnote territory implies, including maitake mushrooms that get hit in the charcoal oven such that they are crispy and smoky on the outside with plenty of toothsome jiggle underneath.
- Stick around for dessert, like a crispy-edged butter rum cake with a dollop of whipped cream in the middle. I’m not usually a dessert orderer, but this made me reconsider.
Make a night of it
Silver Lake has become a different neighborhood than the one I knew when I was playing freeze tag in the strip mall parking lot that now hosts Amiguita. It’s a disaster if you’re looking to rent a tiny two-bedroom place around here, but if you’re trying to fill an evening with grown-up fun it’s hard to resist. Start at Dayglow or Loquat, feast at Amiguita, and then head west into Sunset Junction to Seco, 4100, Black Cat, or Bar Stella after dinner.
Insider tip
There’s a clear best table — the booth in the left corner from the entrance is practically a stage with a dangling light overhead and a great view of the dim, vibey interior of the restaurant and its mural of the Cibao region in the Dominican Republic painted on the western wall. If you want to impress your dining companion, request the corner booth when you make a reservation; you don’t have to get too specific, everyone will know which table you mean.
The takeaway
Despite (or perhaps because of) the booming real estate, Silver Lake remains in need of restaurants that are both interesting and versatile — the area is desperate for more exciting modern Afro-Caribbean cooking like this. Amiguita could gracefully fill that gap.
