That's the way to look at the down-home Latino restaurants that have sprung up all over the Triangle. For their regular customers, with murals and maps and travel posters, they're a taste of home. And they offer the rest of us the opportunity to better understand what life back home is like.
Then there's the food. I remember going into my first one eight or nine years ago and marveling at a shrimp cocktail served in a giant, fluted soda fountain glass swimming with camerones and cocktail sauce, and then trying a rich sopa de mariscos. Both were divine--fresh, homemade and distinctive. I was hooked.
We hope this issue takes away just enough of the mystery to entice you to try one or two of these restaurants. And if you're still uncertain, just look at the barbacoa as someone else's 'cue. --Richard Hart
¡Muy Rico!
The Triangle is becoming rich in native Latino restaurants that embrace real flavor and feel like home by Besha Rodell
Tequila pleasures
Some tequilas are for drunken marauders, and some are for connoisseurs by Besha Rodell
Beyond beer
There are lots of wines that go as well with spicy Latino food as beer, our intrepid WineBeat writer reports by Arturo Ciompi