With a population more than 60 percent Hispanic, Logan Square is home to a predictable number of Mexican restaurants, but other, less mainstream Latin American culinary traditions are represented as well. What follows is a guide to some of the tiny restaurants, taquerias, and other holes-in-the-wall that dot the area.
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Within a block or so of Taqueria Moran, vans parked along Milwaukee serve home-cooked Mexican chow to lines of regulars early on weekend mornings. At a couple less mobile establishments nearby, you’ll also find the distinctive cuisine of Cuba and Ecuador. The real prize at CAFE MARIANAO (2246 N. Milwaukee), essentially a sandwich shop for more than 30 years, is the Cuban, a combo of ham, roast pork, cheese, mustard, and pickle on French-type bread toasted in a clamshell press that crisps both sides and marries the ingredients, yielding a food exponentially greater than the sum of its parts. Up the street is EL CONDOR (2349 N. Milwaukee), an Ecuadorian grocery store where for $6 you can get a platter loaded with meat and sides (weekends only). I’ve had excellent chicken here and recently enjoyed the carnitas, which unlike the Mexican version are simply roast pork chunks, moist and delicious, and menudo, a pleasing rendition of diced tummy mixed with potatoes and succotash–flavorful but not overpowering.
Jumping over to Fullerton and Central Park you’ll come upon CARNITAS EL PAISA (3529 W. Fullerton), a monument to the glories of pig. Here, the muumuu-clad hostess proudly presents the “little meats” of Michoacan, prepared much like French confit, simmered in huge kettles of lard and marvelously flavorful. There’s also a very good cochinita pibil, the Yucatecan dish of suckling pig marinated in bitter orange juice and achiote, steamed in a banana leaf, and laid out in lush threads.
