Lucia, the only Afro-Caribbean fine dining restaurant in L.A., is a destination on Fairfaix Avenue.
“Wait, these are plantains? ” My dinner guests peer at a wedge of pastelón. We’re halfway through a recent dinner at Lucia, a year-old Afro-Caribbean restaurant in Fairfax, and the entire table is dumbfounded.
The pale sheets of plantain possess a familiar sweetness, but they’re as thin and al dente as pasta. In between them are interchanging layers of Wagyu sofrito, humming with annatto's earthy, peppery bitterness, and Pecorino béchamel. A mildly acidic tomato sauce keeps the dish in the sweet spot of heavenly rich but never overwhelming. It tastes like the sort of thing you’d want to make for someone you’re falling in love with.
Chef Cleophus “Ophus” Hethington grew up in south Florida eating pastelón, a dish made by layering plantains with ground meat cooked with peppers and onions, and lots of cheese. The love for this plantain lasagna-casserole is prolific, with both Puerto Ricans and Dominicans claiming ownership. Hethington swaps the sliced plantain for his own pasta, made primarily with puréed plantains, some tapioca starch and a little bit of all-purpose flour.
A Caribbean grandmother might raise an eyebrow, but when you sink a fork into each layer, a universal comfort and familiarity registers. Lucia sits on a stretch of Fairfax Avenue historically known as a Jewish cultural hub. In the 2000s, the street transformed into a nexus of youth culture, with streetwear shops and restaurants like Animal. This is the Fairfax Avenue that Lucia owner Sam Jordan fell in love with when he moved to Los Angeles a decade ago.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and he watched as storefronts shuttered. With his first solo venture, Jordan hopes Lucia is at the center of what he calls the 'big Fairfax Avenue comeback.
' The front door opens to one of the most breathtaking rooms in the city. Glowing,18-foot palm sculptures tower over the bar. Multiple seating areas boast plush seating in warm jewel tones of emerald and chartreuse. The most prized seats are the elevated, semicircular booths tucked into clam-shell shaped alcoves that overlook the main dining room.
When the restaurant first opened, Adrian Forte was behind the menu of coconut fried chicken, bluefin tuna tartare and a $225 caviar service. Earlier this year, Jordan brought in Hethington, a Navy veteran whose travels through the Caribbean and appreciation of Black foodways matched his own. Hethington cooked at restaurants all over the U.S., in Italy and Brazil.
In Atlanta, he started a pop-up series called Ebi, meaning family and hunger in Yoruba, drawing from his travels through Africa and the Americas. In 2020, he started his own spice company called Triangular Trade, named for the brutal trade system that brought European goods and guns to Africa in exchange for enslaved Africans, who were forcibly transported to the Americas, and the enslaved labor that produced the sugar, cotton and tobacco shipped to Europe for sale.
For Hethington, Black foodways have always been central to the stories he tells on the plate. There’s a pleasurable cadence to the menu that begins with the “plantain expressions. ” A heap of golden maduros sit in a perfect circle of plantain mole that coats the bottom of the plate. Over the top, overlapping ribbons of plantain chips.
You swipe a chip through the thick mole, musky with smoked plantains and fiery with the spice of habanero and chipotle. The Wagyu patties lean more Panamanian than Jamaican in presentation, shaped like plump half moons with scalloped edges. The flaky pastry is filled with beef cheeks that have been rubbed in tomato paste, cured in salt, chiles and spices for 24 hours, then cooked coq-au-vin style in a braising liquid that’s more than half red wine.
The process renders the cheeks so tender, they're practically spreadable. Raw presentations like albacore crudo or nuggets of rock shrimp in fruit-infused coconut water accompanied by a handful of cassava chips lack the finesse and punch found elsewhere on the menu, but they make for fine snacks while sipping from a goblet of gin and tonic spiked with culantro shrub, or an okra martini, savory with lemongrass and thyme and crowned with a pickled okra garnish.
Most of the menu turnover occurs in the “nuff nuff” section, where you might find an Oil Down, the national dish of Grenada, re-imagined with chunks of sweet lobster and prawns, squares of fried dasheen alongside starchy breadfruit and arugula cooked down until it mimics spinach. If Hethington can source the preferred barramundi, look for the green-fig-leaves fish roast. The fish is rubbed in a Caribbean version of yuzu kosho, punchy with culantro, green peppercorns and sour orange.
Wrapped in a banana leaf and left to dry before cooking, the fish takes on a firm, luxurious texture that melts into a pool of red pepper coconut broth. If diners are looking for jerk chicken, they'll need to look elsewhere. Hethington didn't want to cannibalize his menu with the dish, instead compromising with a jerk lamb shank, and a whole Chinese Trini chicken, an homage to the popular takeout food in Trinidad.
The shank is a behemoth chunk of meat, marinated in about a pantry’s worth of spices including black cardamon, cinnamon, allspice, marjoram and cocoa powder. It’s braised for hours until wobbly and tender enough to cut with a feather. Underneath is a mash of sweet potatoes, goat cheese and brown butter you’d be lucky to find on any holiday table. When the Chinese Trini chicken arrives, it will require all of your attention.
The sounds of the superb DJ parked in the middle of the dining room will fall away , and you will laser focus on licking every last bit of the deep brown, ginger and chile-infused chicken glaze off your fingers. Lucia's strongest dessert is the pastelitos, a take on the Cuban pastries Hethington ate for breakfast as a kid in Miami.
The giant, flaky turnovers ooze with a swirling mix of sweet guava paste and cheese. At some point during the meal, possibly after your second okra martini softens the edges of the day, you get the sense that you're experiencing a slice of history in real time. Lucia feels like a real destination, poised to help usher in the great revitalization of one of the greatest streets in the city.
Please follow us on Google to support us United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Dublin Teachers' EU-Funded Trip to Aruba for Diversity TrainingEight senior teachers at Dublin secondary schools went on trips costing €28,000 to a tropical island in the Caribbean to attend a weeklong 'diversity, inclusion and mindfulness' training retreat. The trips were organized by the Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education Training Board to the Dutch island of Aruba, which is an overseas territory of the Netherlands and eligible for EU funding. The EU Erasmus-plus program paid €3,467 for each teacher to fly 7,100km and stay in a villa for the six-day long €560 per person courses at the sun-kissed location.
Read more »
Elderly Cruise Passenger Dies After Plunging Off Pier in BahamasA woman, believed to be 88-year-old American tourist, died after falling from a Carnival cruise liner into the water in the Bahamas. The cause of death is still under investigation. But initial reports suggest that she may have hit her head after falling into the water. There are also previous incidents, including a woman falling from balcony and another girl being found dead on a cruise ship sailing from Miami to the Caribbean.
Read more »
The Bride Wore Her Own Design to Her Barefoot Beach Wedding in AntiguaModel and designer Liv Rosewood created a crochet gown and a vintage-inspired Juliet veil for her laid-back wedding to Alistair Smallwood in the Caribbean.
Read more »
Carnival Cruise passenger dies after leaping overboard in Caribbean, second death to hit cruise line in a weekToday's Video Headlines: 05/13/26
Read more »