Audio By Carbonatix
Totally trashing an eatery is generally neither fun nor fair. But one thing that does justify joyful decimation is when a restaurant undeniably demonstrates deliberate disrespect for diners. And that’s a fair description of the experience two dining companions and I had recently at Cheli’s Café.
After a brief initial stint on Biscayne Boulevard, Cheli’s reopened just north of the Design District several months ago. The café’s building is low-rent, but so are its prices: The highest-ticket items on the menu go for $6.95, and most are $4 to $5. What seemed even more exciting than the prices was that both the sign out front and the menu I’d picked up earlier that day touted the fare as “real food.” One side dish listed on the menu, for instance, was homemade potato chips; how many eateries take the trouble to make these fresh? And descriptions of a few dishes showed sparks of delightful creativity and ambition, like a pork pizza with hoisin sauce and cilantro. We were psyched.
Opting to sit at one of two small tables out front (the interior was too depressing), we ordered the pork pizza. “Sorry,” said our waiter. “No pork pizza. No pizza at all.”
“Okay,” I said. “But do you have everything else on the menu?”
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“Yes,” he said. I ordered the homemade potato chips.
“Oh, no, we don’t make these potato chips,” he said, sounding flustered. “They’re from a bag.”
Also unavailable was the steak and eggs, listed under “Breakfast — Anytime.” Ditto the cheese and scallion quesadilla, a breakfast burrito, a bowl of soup (“homemade daily,” according to the menu), and a steak sandwich (“best in town”). I ordered key lime pie (“extra-silky — the best anywhere”). It was unavailable.
“Okay,” said my other friend. “How about if you tell us what we can order.” After our waiter went down the menu item by item, it appeared that considerably less than half of the dishes listed were possibilities.
Of the items we finally successfully procured, an alleged “Carolina pulled pork sandwich” was best, though the pork (in chunks, not pulled) was dry, colder than room temperature, and dripping with ketchupy barbecue sauce as well as sour cream. In fairness to Cheli’s, the latter concoctions were described on the menu, so we knew what we were in for. However, they’d have given any real North Carolina ‘cue purist a stroke.
The house salad sounded intriguing (“mixed lettuce with roasted beets in a balsamic vinaigrette”) but was iceberg, with a few cuke and tomato slices plus one jarred pickled pepper — no fresh beets. When I pointed out the crucial omission to our waiter, he grabbed the salad, saying he’d see if the chef would fix it. We never saw it again.
Onion rings, described as “sweet onions dipped in beer batter” turned out to be those preformed frozen circles of heavily breaded onion-flavored batter, with no actual ring of onion inside.
“Real food” — in what fantasy world?
A Cuban sandwich, described as “extremely fresh and authentic,” was a disgusting mayonnaise-slathered sandwich of mediocre-quality ham and cheese on vaguely Cuban-like bread — no mustard, no pickles, and, most appallingly, no roast pork. Personally I don’t nitpick about whether the most authentic Cuban sandwich is the Tampa type (with salami) or the salami-free Miami model, but — dammit! — a “Cuban sandwich” without pork is not a Cuban sandwich. (At $4.55, it’s not cheap either.)
Seeking explanations, my Cuban-American dining companion asked to speak to the chef, who arrogantly insisted that the Cuban sandwich was authentic. There was no pork, he said, because “everyone is so afraid to get fat.” He also claimed that the breaded circles did contain rings of onion, though I crumbled several in front of him to prove they were pure batter. The deceptive menu? “We have different specials every day. You should have ordered one of them!” he yelled, outraged.
“No one mentioned any specials,” retorted one of my friends.
“Anyway, I ordered key lime pie, which is a special,” I added. “You don’t have it.”
“What is the matter with you people?” he barked. “Are you writers for some paper?”
So only food critics would be picky enough to find fault with menus full of food diners can’t order, fake Cuban sandwiches, and so on … right? Heh. I think Miamians might surprise the fellow. Anyone want to bet that within a year there’ll be a nice vacant space on 44th Street, in which some chef who truly respects real food — and real people — will, with luck, open the cheap-eats jewel Cheli’s could have been?
