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When the Culinary Dice Don’t Roll Your Way

I’ve now ordered from Unimarket South Kitchen a few times over recent months , and several menu items have made repeat appearances. At this point, I think I’ve eaten enough of their food to have a reasonably informed opinion.

In fact, after the first of these orders, I was feeling pretty good about the place. I’d mentioned to Nancy, that I thought I’d found somewhere for Latin food that was actually quite good. Not every dish was necessarily going to be a home run, obviously, but the food I’d had up to that point had given me enough confidence to keep ordering.

Which, as it turns out, was perhaps somewhat premature.

Because the most recent orders and in particular one I had purchased fairly recently were, unfortunately, the worst orders I’ve received from Unimarket South Kitchen.

And, naturally, the latter was the order I proceeded to share with Nancy. Go figure.

There is a particular kind of embarrassment that comes from enthusiastically recommending a restaurant to your foodie wife and then sitting across from her while the meal proceeds to prove you spectacularly wrong.

Nancy now trusts my restaurant recommendations a little less than she used to.

I can’t really blame her.

The problem with Unimarket South Kitchen isn’t that the food is bad. It quite obviously isn’t. I’ve had some genuinely excellent food from them. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea which version of that food is going to turn up on any particular day.

Take the Colombian chorizo.

The first time I ordered it, it was wonderful. Really good sausage, and I was a very happy man.

I admittedly have a weakness for sausage that is probably best described as a deep character flaw. Meat in tube form, as Tony Bourdain so rightly also appreciated, is one of my culinary kryptonites. If it’s meat from a dead animal and cooked in a tube… Basically, put a sausage on a menu and I will almost certainly order it. Put pork in that sausage and you’ve removed whatever tiny amount of restraint I might otherwise have possessed.

Pork is as I’ve oft noted, my favourite edible animal. I’m not particularly proud of that, but there it is.

So having the Colombian chorizo turn up dry and cold on the last two occasions was genuinely painful. There are few things more disappointing than ordering one of your favourite forms of food and discovering that someone has managed to somehow make pork in tube form disappointing.

Of course, meat as tube isn’t my only weakness. Take meat, vegetables, spices and cheese, mix them together into something delicious, then wrap the whole mess in fried or baked dough and I’m probably going to have a difficult time saying no. As I’ve already established in my samosa and sambusa post, apparently putting a savoury filling inside a piece of dough is another one of my culinary kryptonites. So, between sausages and empanadas, Unimarket South Kitchen is pretty much attacking me from two sides.

This is therefore doubly painful as the empanadas have been an even more interesting experience.

I’ve tried several of their varieties, including the Argentine, Colombian and Venezuelan empanadas. At times, all of them have been good. Some have been very good. I had a mushroom and cheese empanada during a recent meal—I believe it was the Colombian version—and that particular empanada was truly excellent.

Unfortunately, that very inconsistency is becoming something of a theme here.

I’ve also been checking the website over the last couple of weeks because there are still some varieties of empanada they serve which I haven’t tried. Unfortunately, all of the ones I haven’t tried have been showing as out of stock on each occasion I looked.

I don’t actually know why.

I had hoped that the empanadas were being made fresh in-house, because that would certainly make the most sense to me. But I don’t know whether that’s actually the case. If they are using a prepared or frozen product from somewhere else, then there’s another possibility to consider as regards the inconsistency I’ve noticed: perhaps some of the variation in quality is coming from the manufacturer rather than Unimarket South Kitchen itself.

I have no evidence that this is happening. It’s simply something I find myself wondering about when the same varieties repeatedly show as “sold out” on the menu.

And then there’s the pork belly chicharrón. A combination of words that makes me weak in the knees.

The first two times I ordered the chicharrón, it was fantastic. Crispy skin, tender pork, the fresh lime and salsa Fresca, delicious. Exactly the sort of thing that makes you think, “Yup, I’ll be ordering that again.”

And I did.

Most recently, Nancy and I each ordered one. Unfortunately, both were cold and a little chewy. Much of the skin was chewy as well and wasn’t really edible. To be fair, it wasn’t uniformly bad and of course there’s the delivery time to consider. Still, some portions were still seemingly properly cooked and crispy. But much had gone from what should have been crisp and wonderful to something much closer in texture to leather while still being quite warm.

Again, a considerable change from the first two occasions.

The chorizo and arepa appie has been even less successful altogether. I’ve had it twice, and on both occasions the arepa was cold, hard and dry. The chorizo was similar though it was slightly better on the second occasion, but the arepa has been a consistent disappointment.

Nancy also recently ordered the Tamal Veracruzano. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very good either,  in our opinion.

We’ve eaten tamales in several countries, from as far afield as the Philippines to right next door in Mexico, so we’re certainly not expecting every tamale we encounter to be identical. Different countries and regions have their own traditions and flavours. But this one simply didn’t do much for us. It wasn’t what we had hoped for.

There are, however, a couple of small things that have been remarkably consistent.

The Colombian aji sauce has been excellent every time I’ve had it. Fresh, spicy and with exactly the sort of kick I want from a salsa. I’m assuming it’s made in-house, although I don’t actually know that.

There’s also a white dipping sauce that comes with some of the items, likely the arepa, although I’m not quite sure what it is. Salsa de ajo, perhaps? but whatever it is, I like it. Very much.

Those sauces have actually been among the most dependable things I’ve eaten from there, which is somewhat unfortunate given they are condiments.

And therein lies my problem with writing a conventional restaurant review of Unimarket South Kitchen.

Usually, you try enough things and eventually you can tell people what to order.

“Get this.”

“Don’t bother with that.”

“This is the thing you absolutely have to try.”

I can’t really do that here.

I could tell you to order the chicharrón because the first two I had were fantastic. But the more recent ones were decidedly not.

I could tell you to try the Colombian chorizo because it was wonderful the first time. But again the last two were dry and cold.

I could recommend the empanadas because I’ve had Argentine, Colombian and Venezuelan versions that were genuinely good, including one particularly excellent mushroom and cheese version. But I’ve also had empanadas that weren’t nearly as good, and I can’t seem to get the same quality consistently.

I could recommend the arepa, except that both I’ve received have been cold, hard and dry.

I could recommend the Tamal Veracruzano, except I really can’t.

The twy sauces? Those I can recommend without any hesitation.

And that’s a pretty strange place for a restaurant review to end up.

Unimarket South Kitchen clearly has the ability to produce some very good food. That’s why I’ve kept eating their offerings. If everything had been mediocre, I wouldn’t have bothered ordering from them repeatedly over months.

There are dishes here that have made me sit up and take notice.

The problem is that there are also times during which the very same dishes have made me wonder what happened between one order and the next.

And consistency matters.

Especially when you’re ordering something you’ve already enjoyed. If I order your chorizo again, I’m not asking for something different. I’m ordering it because I remember the first one and want that experience again.

When I don’t get it, that’s disappointing.

And when you’ve spent time following the first experiences telling your wife that you’ve found a good place, only to have the worst meal you’ve had from there arrive when she’s sitting across the table from you, it’s just a little embarrassing.

Nancy may forgive me.

Again, I’m not sure she’ll trust my restaurant recommendations quite as readily next time.

At this point, I’m reluctant to recommend any particular dish from Unimarket South Kitchen with any great confidence. Not because I think the food is inherently poor, but because I simply can’t predict what version of it you’re likely going to receive.

You might get an excellent empanada.

You might get a very ordinary one.

You might get chicharrón that makes you wonder why you haven’t been ordering it all along.

Or you might get one where you’re spending more time chewing the skin than enjoying it.

And if you’re anything like me, ordering a pork sausage and receiving a dry, cold sausage is not merely a bad meal. It’s a small personal betrayal that kills a tiny part of you just a little bit inside.

There is clearly something good happening at Unimarket South Kitchen. I just wish it happened more consistently.

For now, ordering from them feels a little like rolling the culinary dice.

Sometimes you win.

Sometimes you don’t.

And unfortunately, I’ve rolled enough times now to know that the odds aren’t quite as good as I’d like them to be.