December 11, 2002

Bananarama

By Paul Reidinger

THIS LATIN FOOD craze ... I wonder. I wonder about all crazes, manias, and fads, of course; I marvel at the snowball effect, in which one distinctive restaurant is suddenly surrounded by a dozen or more similar ones. (Another, possibly less flattering, word to describe this phenomenon is "stampede.") Late in the 1990s we witnessed, in SoMa, the advent of Maya, which resembled a fairly formal French restaurant serving the flavors of Latin America, and Che, a pan-Latin fusion spot. But Maya, though good, was cloned from a New York restaurant, and Che, buried alive in an invisible location, expired like its many and short-lived predecessors. Meantime, SoMa itself imploded.

But now we switch locales, to the Mission District, which, with its profusion of Spanish-speaking communities and tremendous restaurant vitality, is the logical place for Latin-influenced cooking to flourish. And so it is. We probably shouldn't count Destino (which, at Market near Guerrero, is a bit far afield), but in the last year or so the Mission has bloomed with such stylishly Latin places as Alma, La Luna, Limón, and now Platanos.

These places are more alike than not, at least to the palate. There is no shortage of seviche, say, or rice and beans, or well-spiced sauces. Tropical influences (such as coconut milk) are not uncommon. To the extent that these restaurants can be distinguished from one another, the differences have largely to do with ambience. Alma is a white-napkin sort of place. Limón has an edge of urban spareness. And Platanos has inherited (from the previous occupant, the deserving but ill-fated Eritrean restaurant Mereb) a handsome vault of banklike solidity that, under high square ceilings, seems bigger than it is.

The splendor of the space tends to dwarf the lesser design cues – the ceiling fans and tangerine paint scheme chief among them, which, diminished or not, don't exactly proclaim, Modern Latin food served here – but then it doesn't really matter. The location, commanding the heavily trafficked corner of 18th and Guerrero Streets, is prime, and the wide-ranging menu is good enough to keep the initial crowds coming back for more.

Surely, for instance, the crowds have noticed that the pupusas are a good buy. These ($3 each) are Salvadoran in origin and resemble polenta omelettes, folded in half and stuffed with white cheese and such simple supplements as beans or sweet red peppers. Platanos's pupusas are on the pricey side, as these inexpensive items go, but they're also enormous. A pair of them goes a long way to making up a lunch for two people.

The basic theme of the menu isn't fusion so much as potpourri – a dish from here, a dish from there. A pork sandwich ($7), enriched with slices of butter-ripe avocado and served with chilled corn salsa and spicy pickled cabbage (rather like kimchee), struck us as distinctly Cuban; a chunky sopa de pollo ($5.75), on the other hand, seemed Mexican, as did a moist, fluffy tamale ($11.50) filled with chicken, rice, and olives.

As the name Platanos suggests (plátanos are more commonly known to us as plantains, the starchy bananas), the food's temper is often tropical. The marquee plantain itself makes a number of appearances, whether as a heap of crisp-fried strips with salsa at the outset of the meal, cut into rounds, roasted to marshmallow-like sponginess and served as tostones ($3.50), with pico de gallo and red salsa, or, mashed and fried, as croquettes to be served with the vast chile relleno ($10.50). This last dish, with its stuffing of brie and wild mushrooms, sounds one of the few fusion notes on the menu.

Seafood isn't always tropical, but a seafood soup with coconut milk ($8) is. You'll find crab, prawns, clams, and white fish in the bowl, but no ginger or lemongrass – the principal clue that the soup isn't made from an Indo-Chinese recipe. Seviche ($8), of course – generally some combination of scallops, shrimp, and white-fleshed fish, cooked by the acid in citrus juice – is endemic to Latin American gastronomy. And prawns substantially contribute to what might be Platanos' two signature dishes. The plump crustaceans are wrapped in thinly sliced plantains ($6), deep-fried like corn dogs and served with guava-pineapple salsa; they are sautéed in red sauce ($12.75), then handsomely arranged with julienne zucchini, cactus, white rice – and plantains. Of course.