La Duni Logo
At breakfast and lunch, the sun pours in like honey around the small tables and vases of full-bloom roses at LA DUNI LATIN CAFE. At dinner, candles flicker as friends talk and laugh at sidewalk tables. Owners Espartaco and Dunia Borga have come up with imaginative takes on various homestyle South American cuisines at this two-year-old enclave in central Dallas' upscale Knox-Henderson area. She's from Columbia; he was born in Spain and grew up in Mexico, South America and Europe. Together, they bring a sophisticated, cross-cultural freshness to familiar dishes. If I had to eat one thing for the rest of my life, I could hardly do better than Espartaco's wonderfully tender pollo al aljibe, half a roast chicken in a celestial sauce of pan juices, champagne, and sour-orange juice. It showcases the refined, urban part of the South America equation, while dishes like the Venezuelan pabellon criollo - flank steak stewed in a salty tomato-achiote salsa and shredded into a moist mound of meat - represent the rustic, country part. (If that sounds familiar, it is. A very similar dish goes by the quirky name ropa vieja - "old clothes" - in Mexico and Cuba. America's sloppy joe is a distant relative.) Accompaniments include nuggets of fried sweet plantain, simple black beans and rather ordinary garlic rice. Latin American's love affair with sweets has led pastry queen Dunia to create a beauty pageant of desserts. Her panque de limon - a voluptuous, course-textured vanilla sponge cake with citrus accents and a rakish cap of meringue - makes me think of Mae West.