Restaurant Review: Antojitos El Catracho

Antojitos El Catracho 7340 McGraw St., Detroit 313-399-3135 Handicap accessible Dinners: $6-$12.49 Antojitos: $2-$5.49 Breakfast: $7-$8 Open 10 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday

Why choose a Central American restaurant over a Mexican one? (Assuming, in both cases, that youre going for the real thing rather than an Americanized version. Actually, I havent yet met an Americanized Central American restaurant. In Detroit, at least, theyre all real-deal, serve-the-neighborhood places.)

Fried plantains would be reason enough. But enormous sopas with hand-made tortillas, crisp carne asada, tamales done right, and horchata are also plenty of motivation, as is your perpetual desire to broaden your horizons.

I say this as a person whos lived in Central America for months at a time, so I admit to the taste of second home bias.

El Catracho means The Honduran. Ignore the antojitos (appetizers) part of the name; youll get giant full-course meals here. Its decorated with a mural of a campesino digging rocks out of a field, a reminder of why so many felt they needed to leave and come here.

A brief lesson on plantains, which are the 10th-most important staple food in the world: The different names in different countries for varying degrees of ripeness and preparation methods are dizzying, but at El Catracho you need remember only three. Tajadas are green plantains sliced and then fried. Tostones are fried slices, pounded thinner with a wooden tostonera, and then fried again. Neither is sweet, as the fruit has not yet ripened, and though theyre a ubiquitous side dish in Honduras, I find them tasting mostly like generic fried. Garlic cream is offered on the side, in one version. Platanos maduros, on the other hand, are super-sweet, a traditional breakfast dish, though you might use them as dessert. Served with black beans and crema, theres nothing like them.

Pupusas (typically Salvadoran) come stuffed with various combos of cheese, beans, and chicharron. We got ours with loroco (a vine flower ) but found the whole (large) thing pretty mild. Like many dishes here, its served with a big heap of shredded cabbage sometimes with a sprinkle of powdered Parmesan on top!

Better was a pastelito, the Honduran pasty, because whats not to like about crisp, fried dough encasing meat? And better still was the $2 tamal, chicken or pork the moist, square kind steamed in a plantain leaf, not the dry cylindrical kind thats more common around here. Try a tamal this way and you wont go back.

New to me was the baleada, a street food, which our waitress described as like a burrito but just folded over. Here its pretty bland and contains scrambled eggs, beans, sour cream, and cheese in a flour tortilla. Hot sauce would improve it.

Those for whom the best accolade for meat is tender should not try Central American carne asada. Probably the steers are stringy, and being cooked within an inch of its life bumps up the chewiness factor. Here its a thicker cut than Ive had in Guatemalan restaurants, with a bit of a crust, and, in my opinion, deliciously tasty. Its served with rice and beans, of course; be sure to ask for whole beans.

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Restaurant Review: Antojitos El Catracho