Restaurants

Latin Sizzle

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Brazilian moqueca, a stew of shrimp, scallops, mussels, and calamari in a coconut-milk broth, sounded excellent on the menu. The scallops were plump, but the mussels were small, the calamari tough. The broth featured garlic, onion, tomato and bell pepper, but these could hardly make themselves heard above the rich, sweet coconut milk. I enjoyed my first few bites of "Tamarind Salmon" but found it cloyingly sweet thereafter. Aside from a bland quinoa pilaf, the dish had nothing to balance out the too-sweetness of the glaze; the "hint of habañero chile" the menu promised was just a rumor. A missed opportunity, really, because in theory the sweet-sour flavor of tamarind pulp would be a welcome presence on a plate such as this.

Of all the dishes I tried at Wapango, cochinita pibil was perhaps the most ambitious — and the most frustrating. This is a traditional Yucatán dish. Recipes generally call for pork marinated in sour orange juice, achiote paste (known for its distinctive reddish hue as much for its flavor) and various spices, then roasted inside banana leaves. At Wapango, it's a big to-do. The waiter opens the banana leaves at your table with a flourish. Steam pours out, and then you dig into...pork. It was tender but didn't have much flavor besides (undeniably good) roasted pork with a little salt and pepper. Only the pickled onions served on the side boosted the dish beyond ordinary.

The wine list is refreshingly different, composed almost exclusively of Latin American wines, including a large selection of Argentinean malbecs. And desserts are excellent: Chocolate fritters (think chocolate doughnut holes) would have been indulgent all by themselves but came with dulce de leche-flavor ice cream and caramel sauce.

Also quite good was the cuatro leches cake, which is layered with a strawberry paste and served with a mango sauce. This, obviously, is a riff on traditional tres leches cake. The four milks — whole, half-and-half, condensed and coconut — resulted in an incredibly moist (but not soggy) cake, and the fruit added exactly the right touch of natural sweetness. It was representative of Wapango at its best: audacious in presentation ("Tres leches aren't enough! There must be cuatro!"), subtle in flavor.

It's hard not to like a place with such unabashed swagger — especially in such a cookie-cutter suburban shopping mall. Wapango has rhythm to spare. The melody just needs to be louder.

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