Slamming Cape Verdean Restaurant

My chowhounding skills are not failing me in a different hemisphere. On my very first meal in Lisbon, I scored a grand slam home run.

Sometimes for kicks I vicariously survey distant restaurants on Google Maps or Yelp. There is, I've found, little difference between directing one's chow-dar toward places as they flow past car/bus/taxi windows, and surfing places on the information highway. I ignore ratings and barely delve into reviews. But the photos. The photos don't lie. Even if they're professional shiny photos commissioned by the owner. I see through them instantly.

A few months ago, I scouted out, with great excitement, a Cape Verdean restaurant in the western extremes of Lisbon. None of my Portuguese foodie friends had remotely heard of it. In fact, many Lisbonites are oddly unaware of even the city's most prominent Cape Verdean bastion, Tambarina, which I've patronized for thirty years.

Tambarina is a real joint, with grouchy service (until they get to know you, and/or if you eat with enthusiasm). Lighting, seating, decor, and pretty much every other parameter is somewhat short of snuff, aside from the food, which is superbly homey albeit uninspired.

But By Milocas, the basement cafeteria in the Centro Cultural Cabo Verde, is spic and span, comfortable, disarmingly friendly, and an obvious labor of love, lorded over by chef Milocas, who served me one of the ten best meals of my life.

Here are a couple of nice shots from photo books about Cape Verde from the center's generous - and freely browsable - collection:

The place is no shiny Epcot proposition, introducing lookie loos to "the exotic flavors of the Cape Verdean islands". And I'm not going to turn them into a lab specimen via food nerd explication of the cuisine. This isn't about a cuisine. It's about one woman's ineffable touch. It's very much a grandma proposition...only grandma's a towering genius.

The menu:

I of course started with ponche.

Cape Verdean punch is a deep and frightful thing which must be approached with cautious respect. Knock-out strong, while sneakily delicious, they'd run out of the honey version (their specialty) so I had to settle for coconut punch, which nearly made me lose consciousness - not from alcohol poisoning, but from sheer ethereal nuanced loveliness. As with every single bite or sip here, flavors are layered with unearthly skill. And you can't begin to identify those flavors, for two reasons:

1. As I explained in my surprisingly non-ditzy system for rating foods (and other things) from one to ten:

[At 9] rational thought breaks down. You don't analyze, you just want to keep enjoying, blocking out all distraction.

That's the hallmark of a "9". And everything here is a "10". So good luck figuring out what the hell's going on.

2. Milocas is a crafty devil, infusing even simple dishes with touches. So many subliminal touches. Or - Jesus, who knows - maybe not. Maybe she's cooking extremely simply, with nary a secret ingredient, but evoking such flavor and subtlety that everything tastes like myriad beautiful things. Secondary flavors and tertiary flavors. Duodenary flavors. Heptopicodenary flavors.

Moving on...

These are a bit of a linguistical puzzle. Samosas in Portugal are "chamusas". And these are half-sized, hence the diminutive "chamusinhas". They made me want to scream. Or dance. Or cry. I have no idea what I looked like as I pitched an unintentionally extravagant fit in the basement cafeteria of the Cabo Verde Cultural Center, but in my mind I was spasmodically twitching and moaning and clutching my head as if experiencing some sort of seizure. Which, in fact, I was.

Chachupa refogada is a pile of refried garbanzo beans, studded with chunks of meat so tenderly blended in that it was impossible to differentiate. I kept trying, with utter futility, to capture the bean/meat dichotomy with my phone camera:

Also: a single thin slice of the greatest chorizo I ever ate. Rubbery and tender, spicy and mild, greasy and salubrious, it united every duality. My seizure worsening, I feared someone might rush over to hold down my tongue.

Oh, moamba (MWAHM-bah), identical to the French-African root mashes known as fufu, was, alas, sold out.

Dessert is some of the best stuff:

Bolo de Banana is very similar to a Brazilian dessert I've long been fond of and which is no longer of the least interest. It seems to have been suffused with jaggery and treacle and molasses and lots of other ingredients from a Hobbit kitchen, and it all aggregates perfectly to support the flavor of the sublimely marinated and baked banana.

The tender cake (and its richly caramelized surface), I can't really remember. I wasn't supposed to be looking there, and I went with the program (as if there were a choice).

Second dessert: Pudim de Queijo. Flan, but with cheese added somewhere/somehow. I don't really understand anything about this except to say that it's flan with a fresh dimension, in the cosmological sense. From the looks of it, one would expect classic flan, which goes THIS way. But, after a moment, tectonically unexpected flavors arise, elevating you several floors. Oh, ok! We're going up THERE now!

Everyone in the place - mostly Portuguese - seemed indifferent. Making small talk, gulping down red wine, playing with their smartphones. This answers the question "Why isn't food always this great?" Because people don't notice when it is. That said, they were eating there, not somewhere else. So there was attraction on some level. Idunno.

I strained, with my rudimentary Portuguese, to offer Milocas proper appreciation. "Fantástica!", I gleamed. "Montanha fantástica", I added, miming with my hands the peak of a very high mountain. Best I could do. I also bussed my own plates. I do that, involuntarily, sometimes, when I reach this state.

Finally, I asked for a macaroon-ish coconut confection to go, which I later offered friends who'd listened politely to my account, waiting patiently while I plied my shtick, going off hotly over my latest BIG DISCOVERY and whatever. After letting me exhaust myself, they took tentative bites of the Doce Coco and fire ignited in their eyes, along with what appeared to be tears.

I began shouting, "SEE?? This is what I was SAYING! EVERYTHING'S this good!!" One friend, who really just wanted to be left alone with her remaining morsel of doce coco, which she'd unconsciously begun to stroke like a cat, managed to choke out a response:

"I don't care about 'everything.' I love THIS!"