Stop in Mexico, but Stay in Cuba

I never noticed El Burrito Loco until the truck ran into it. Three years ago a runaway truck ended up straddling its counter, and I figured, hey, got to check it out. Eventually, that is.

It’s all rebuilt now, though the room certainly looks fancier the farther you get from the ordering counter, where the decor runs to candy machines and racks of Latino music cassettes and CDs. But down at the other end of the room, where you have a view of the big five-way corner of Burbank and Victory boulevards, there are fewer baseball and beer pennants and a lot more photos of Cuba.

You can get a pretty good burrito here, but Mexican food is really a cover. If you look to the right of the big menu of Mexican and American fast-food dishes behind the counter, there’s a separate menu of Cuban specialties. The heart of this place is in its black beans, fried bananas and garlic sauce, its roast pork, media noche and pan y bisteck.

If you want to start out with a Cuban appetizer, the Cuban tamale is a savory flat packet of steamed masa mixed with ham, topped with some garlic sauce. The empanada loca might be Cuban-Mexican fusion: It uses a folded tortilla instead of empanada dough, but otherwise it’s a pretty good Cuban-style fried pie with a filling of chicken, onions and raisins. I must say the remaining appetizers, the ham croqueta and the papa rellena (pretty much a potato croquette), are pretty bland.

But El Burrito Loco makes the best Cuban ropa vieja I’ve had. It looks like a slice of flank steak cooked until it’s falling apart, mixed with browned onions, a bit of tomato sauce and some green olives, all topped with roasted peppers and peas. It’s a meaty, savory dish and, like all the Cuban entrees, it comes with rice, black beans and bananas fried quite brown.

The menu urges you to try the roast chicken (pollo asado), and it’s quite good too, brown and crisp. There’s a range of steaks (all cut very thin in the Latin American manner), including bisteck al palomillo, topped with fried onions and garlic sauce, and pierna de puerco, which is in effect a thin slice of pork shoulder with a teaspoon or two of minced garlic on top.

It’s worth looking into the daily specials, which may include surprises. Once I ordered fricase de puerco, and what I got was really a huge braised lamb shank with a little tomato sauce and olives. I didn’t complain. On the other hand, if you see picadillo, it’s much the same as ropa vieja, only made with ground beef and therefore much less flavorful.

There are also some Cuban items lurking on the main menu behind the counter, among the sandwiches. Naturally there’s the Cuban sandwich and its smaller cousin, media noche, both filled with ham, cheese and roast pork. They’re pretty good, served on the proper Cuban roll, toasted and pressed to make it practically flaky.

I happen to prefer pan y bisteck, which is a Cuban steak sandwich. It’s the usual thin-sliced steak, but instead of lettuce and tomatoes (as in the menu’s American steak sandwich), it’s garnished with shoestring potatoes. This is a steak sandwich that crunches aloud.

The most remarkable sandwich is frita Cubana, a sort of hamburger built on the pan y bisteck model. The patty is ground beef mixed with snappy Cuban sausage, and it comes on a toasted roll with shoestring potatoes and ketchup.

There are a couple of side dishes--extra black beans, extra fried bananas and so on, though practically nothing in the way of vegetables. This is very much a meat and starch place. Of course, you can get a carrot cake at dessert, and a coconut cake that’s really more like pie with a filling like the inside of a Mounds bar. Flan too, for that matter.

As for that burrito, it’s surprisingly good. It’s a huge bolster of meat (your choice: carnitas, carne asada, etc.) wrapped up in a flour tortilla with rice and beans, in a simple sauce of ground chiles with a little melted cheese on top and guacamole, chopped onions and sour cream on the side. If this were just a Mexican restaurant, I’d happily order it. But here, it’s just too hard to pass up frita Cubana, ropa vieja and their kin.

BE THERE

El Burrito Loco, 1001 N. Victory Place (at Burbank and Victory boulevards), Burbank. (818) 238-0063; fax 238-0065. Beer and wine. Parking lot. All major credit cards. Open 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Dinner for two, food only, $8 to $24. What to Get: Cuban tamale, empanada loca, frita Cubana, pan y bisteck, ropa vieja, pollo asado, pierna de puerco, flan.