Cochinita pibil, the long-roasted tender pork that's a classic of Mayan cuisine, is a signature dish at Mayan Cafe.
Cochinita pibil. These two Spanish words – one common, the other not so much – shine a bright light on both the Mayan cuisine of Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula and neighboring Guatemala and into one of Louisville’s favorite South-of-the-Border restaurants, Mayan Cafe.
So what’s a cochinita pibil? A little pig – that’s the easy part – long and slowly roasted in a tart, flavorful marinade of sour oranges and Mayan spices, housed in a large metal box and lowered into a pib, the traditional Mayan fire pit.
Mayan Cafe doesn’t have a giant fire-in-the-hole in the tiny kitchen of its NuLu home, but I can testify that Chef Bruce Ucán’s oven-roasted rendition is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen done to pork.
I know you’re salivating to hear more about this amazing Mayan pork dish, but we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s talk about what makes Mayan Cafe such a favorite, starting with this crazy pandemic that’s shuffling all our lives into a new not-so-normal. Back in March and into April, after Gov. Andy Beshear ordered a stop to dining in restaurants (and for a while, even on patios), it wasn’t clear to many of us whether our favorite restaurants would survive.
Indeed, even after quite a few local favorites started reopening with socially distanced tables for outdoor dining or reduced indoor capacity, Mayan Cafe’s doors remained closed.
But I didn’t worry. Ucán is a survivor, and he has been selling and advocating for Mayan cuisine since the 1980s when he drove a big blue taco truck called The Mayan Gypsy to suburban construction sites. He opened his first brick-and-mortar shop right where he is now in 1987, across Market Street from what was then Wayside Christian Mission. After a brief move to larger quarters a few blocks west that didn't work out, he returned in 2007 to where he began, remodeled, just in time to catch the rising NuLu wave, and he's been there ever since.
But then the pandemic shut down dining-in in Kentucky restaurants on March 16. It would be June 22, ninety-eight days later, before Mayan Cafe opened its dining room for limited 33% capacity again.
Naturally I couldn’t wait to get back over there, not least to get some of that cochinita pibil. ...
Read the complete article on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/mayan-cafe-yucatan
You'll also find this review in LEO Weekly's Food & Drink section today.
http://www.leoweekly.com/category/food-drink/
Mayan Cafe
813 E. Market St.
566-0651
http://themayancafe.com
https://facebook.com/TheMayanCafe
https://instagram.com/mayancafenulu