Floridita

The beans were hard to find for all the meat and potatoes.

"White bean soup" is the menu's gloss on caldo Gallego (Wednesday and Sunday only, $4.95); a literal translation from the Spanish would be soup or broth from Galicia, the region of northwesternmost Spain from which many Cubans and Cuban-Americans claim heritage. In practice, however, caldo Galledo is often a hearty stew. At this Cuban restaurant — which first opened its doors in 1969, closed in 2010 owing to Columbia University's Manhattanville expansion, and reopened late in 2012 in the same building as Dinosaur Bar-B-Que — the ration of meat was especially generous.

Also shown: a picadillo platter starring the namesake ground beef (Wednesday only, $6.95); the "special Cuban sandwich" ($6.95) with ham, pork, pickles, and a generous slather of garlic sauce; a lechon plate (Saturday and Sunday only, $7.95). The pork nearest the bone was best. Below them, from Floridita's previous incarnation, whose menu was nearly identical: coarse-textured Cuban tamales (now two for $3.95) filled with beef; and Ricky Ricardo's favorite dish ($9.95).

Shown at bottom: surviving tracks and a marker, embedded in the roadway in front of the restaurant, from the Third and Amsterdam Avenues streetcar line; and, looking north from that same vantage, the underside of the Henry Hudson Viaduct.

Floridita
2276 Twelfth Ave. (St.-Clair Pl.-West 125th St.), Manhattan
212-662-0090

Comments

[FN]

Floriditas also has a nice, cheap, fatty steak, covered with onions. Coconut flan ain't too bad, either.

[Harvey Fishman]

Dave, is that a marker or a switch controller? Trolley lines in Brooklyn used to have similar things where the motorman would descend from the car with a long steel bar with a loop handle on the end, stick the flattened point of the bar in the hole and move the points of a switch with the bar.

Harvey

[Dave Cook]

I'm not sure, Harvey. If you examine the photo of the curving track (click for a closer look), you'll be able to make out at least four pairs of such markers, albeit of two different generations. That's many more than you'd think would be necessary if these were cover plates for switch controllers. There's no surviving trace of the switch itself, either. On this, I'm out of my depth, but thanks for the recollection.