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Upon your first visit to the excellent new Cafe Americana in Arlington, you may say to yourself what my wife and I said to ourselves: “This is it?”
“This” is a rather innocuous tin building on a backstreet in Arlington. But my wife and I are well versed in the old “looks can be deceiving” saying, as we crisscross counties and cities and states in search of great new restaurants, many of which are in the unlikeliest of places.
That’s most certainly the case with Cafe Americana, a terrific new restaurant opened recently in central Arlington, not far from UTA. It comes from a group of North Texas-area immigrant friends, led by a chef who has strong ties to Fort Worth, Mark Guatelara, who made a name for himself in local food circles with a food truck and brick-and-mortar restaurant called Ober Here, in which he served Filipino food, paying tribute to his heritage.
Cafe Americana is a different beast, not only in terms of its Spanish-inspired cuisine but also how that cuisine is served. While Ober Here, which closed last year, was a simple, sometimes one-man-does-it-all affair, Cafe Americana is a full-service restaurant — a beautifully designed one, too.
Behind the front door of this modest tin building is a visually intoxicating interior: walls painted in vivid splashes of greens and reds, strikingly colorful artwork on every wall and in every nook and cranny, and pretty floral arrangements hanging from the ceiling. Everywhere you look, there’s something cool to see.
“We thought about doing outside what we did inside, but we ran out of money,” laughs Guatelara, who serves as the restaurant’s executive chef and general manager. “But it works, right? We want people to be surprised when they come in. Think about restaurants in Chicago and New York and how on the outside those restaurants are just doors you open. There’s no real exterior. Then once you open those doors, it’s a different experience. People are surprised the first time they come in, and we love that.”
Developed by Guatelara, the menu, too, is a bit of a surprise. Made up of elevated takes on dishes from and around Spain, executed in the form of both tapas and shareable plates by chef de cuisine Wendy Felix, it’s a refreshing change of pace from current foodie trends.
“My background is in fine dining,” Guatelara says, reminding me, as I’m making my way through his beautiful seafood paella, that he once held chef positions at the Gaylord Texan, Live! by Loews Hotel in Arlington, and Renaissance Dallas Hotel. “This is me getting back to my roots. Except I’m not working for a big corporation anymore, doing somebody else’s menu.”
My paella, served in a small skillet, fat with mussels, chorizo, and shrimp, is one of the key dishes at Americana. Because it’s so laborious to make, you don’t see this staple of Spanish cuisine, a combination of rice, saffron, and other ingredients cooked in a shallow pan, on many local menus, and when you do, it’s served family-style, in big portions, and costs an arm and a leg.
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“I definitely wanted to do paella here, but not served in huge portions,” says Guatelara. “We offer different kinds of paella and want to encourage people to sample them all. That’s basically the theme of the restaurant. Everything is meant to be shared.”
Another signature item is freshly made empanadas, flaky pastries, artfully served one atop the other, filled with various ingredients. There are three kinds— potato and carrot stew, jerk chicken with cilantro and mint sauce, and pork and potato — plus a rotating chef’s special.
Other tapas include cordon bleu-inspired croquettes, Peruvian chicken skewers, chicken wings in a spicy guava sauce, and grilled Padrón peppers. Large plates feature an 8-ounce filet with a dizzyingly good chimichurri sauce; pineapple-glazed salmon; and a burger with manchego cheese, charred onions, and roasted garlic pimento spread.
The extensive drinks menu from mixologist Gregory Genias — a co-owner of BootlegGreg Cocktail Co., a Florida-based beverage consulting group — focuses on light and refreshing cocktails, including a tropical mojito with rum, watermelon, lime, brown sugar, and mint and the Americana Ranch Water, a mix of tequila, prickly pear, sparking water, and lime juice; there are also fruit punches on tap.
After the up-and-down economy forced Guatelara to close his two locations of Ober Here (he also ran a ghost kitchen version in Dallas), he fell into a depression, he says, and couldn’t figure out in what direction he wanted to steer his life.
“The economy has been so tough on restaurants,” he says. “I didn’t have any choice but to close. My hands were tied. One location was supporting the other, and that wasn’t sustainable. It was a situation that triggered a lot of mental anguish. I think most people who run restaurants can relate. It threw me into a depression.”
A phone call from a former supervisor who wanted to collaborate with him again put him back in the kitchen, working with a diverse group of restaurant marvels.
“The cool thing is, we’re all immigrants who started out in this country around the same time, about 20 years ago,” he says. “Everybody’s developed their own unique skill over the years, and they each bring something different to the table.”
The original intent wasn’t necessarily to bring an exciting new concept to Arlington; it just worked out that way, Guatelara says.
“The owner wanted to open in Arlington because it’s close to where he lives,” he says, laughing. “He just wanted a fun place for us and the rest of his friends to go and hang out and eat. But since we’ve opened, so many people have said, ‘Thank you for bringing this to Arlington; thank you for opening something different in Arlington.’ I now feel like we are where we’re supposed to be.”
Cafe Americana, 403 E. Main St., cafeamericanatx.com
