Yambo

"Manuelita" is the name (Does any EIT reader know its origin?) of this rolled, toothpicked half-pancake filled with sugar, cinnamon, and cheese ($1.50). The cheese seemed sweet, too, as do many Nicaraguan dishes that are ostensibly savory. Raisins are a common ingredient in this Central American cuisine; one stewlike dish on the steam table was strewn with them.

The decor is whimsical to the point of gaudiness, a sensibility that extends even to the menu. In explanation of one dish, a hearty chopped salad called salpicon, the menu reads simply "salmagundi."

Yambo
1643 S.W. 1st St. (S.W. 16th-S.W. 17th Aves.), Miami
305-649-0203
(From visits in autumn 2012, and earlier)

Comments

[Chris]

Looks delicious. You might want to ask Maria Del Mar Sacasa (http://www.mariadelmarsacasa.com / https://twitter.com/HHandFrijoles), who is Nicaraguan and occasionally contributes family recipes to the collabarative "Latin American Cooking" column on Serious Eats.

[Dave Cook]

"Actually, it's a girl," wrote Ms. Sacasa, who grew up in Nicaragua and Mexico (originally I had written "manuelito"), though she doesn't know the origin of the name. In reply to my query, she added that "the wrapper [should be] more like a porous crepe and is filled with queso duro, a crumbly, dry, salty white cheese and sugar — a common filling in many pastries in Nicaragua." Yambo's pastry may be atypical; if there was anything dry or salty about the filling, it was overwhelmed by the sweetness, according to my notes.

Ms. Sacasa added that "oddly, too, manuelitas are served as a side dish during lunch and dinner, not as a dessert, though it leans towards the sweet." I didn't register this at the time, but the manuelitas indeed appeared on the steam table amid many savory dishes.

Thanks, Maria, and you, too, Chris!

[Chris]

You can find queso duro in baleadas as well. (In NYC, it comes standard at Seis Vecinos.) I think its a whole lot like parmigiano.