Review: Latin American cafe Omarcito’s can be too much, in all the best ways

Omar Cadena didn’t want to make ropa vieja, much less quesa’ropa, at Omarcito’s, his debut restaurant in Chicago.

“My sous chef and I were watching all these kids everywhere doing all these quesabirria things,” Cadena said. The chef and owner opened his restaurant over the summer in the Logan Square neighborhood. “And he had actually worked at a birria place over by Belmont Cragin. So one day, he said, ‘Man, why don’t we use your ropa vieja to make these quesadillas like everybody else is doing.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to step on people’s toes.’”

The chef is Cuban on his mother’s side, Ecuadorian on his father’s side. Now, the ropa vieja, the Cuban-style shredded beef stew from a revered family recipe, and the Mexican-inspired quesa’ropa, have kind of overtaken everything at the restaurant.

“I wanted to do it true to me,” Cadena said. “Which is to always incorporate different parts of Latin America in the things that I do.”

They make the tortillas in-house pretty thick.

“They’re almost kind of like pupusa in a way,” he said. “So they have that good consistency to absorb all that messiness from the ropa vieja and the cheese.”

And that’s before you add the green mayo garlic sauce.

“Another madness, and I had no idea it was going to take off the way that it did,” Cadena said. “I actually first made it for a homeboy of mine like a year and a half back when I took a COVID care package to him. He was like, ‘Bro, this thing right here is fire.’ ”

What’s truly fiery is the creamy green hot sauce that looks nearly exactly the same. You will mix them up if you’re not careful, when it feels like you can’t get enough of the wonderfully delicious mess that’s a smothered cousin to the quesabirria (A tacos dorados special just replaced the quesa’ropa on the menu, but you can still order it if you ask.).

“It’s a beautiful mess of family, fighting, loving and like another level of flavor,” the chef said. “What I wanted to do is punch you and hug you at the same time.”

He sought to do the same with his empanadas, which he initially didn’t want to make either.

“Because everybody’s doing empanadas, too,” Cadena said. “But I said if we’re gonna make them, we’re going to stuff the hell out of them.”

And, indeed, they have. The No. 1 bestseller is the intensely rich ropa vieja. But the second is lechon, a citrus- and garlic-marinated pork, cooked down stunningly soft and silky.

“That’s been a very difficult thing for my sous chef and my crew who are back there folding empanadas, because of how juicy the meat is,” the chef said. “And they sell out fast.”

And for good reason, with hearty flaky crusts overstuffed with fillings that are distinctly identifiable. My personal favorite is the guava and cheese, bright with the tropical fruit, which is the same for Cadena, but for different reasons.

“That’s just because of my Cuban heritage,” he said. “It’s a childhood thing for me, eating guava and Philly cream cheese on a cracker was simplicity.”

I strongly advise stashing a few extra empanadas away for the week, since Omarcito’s is only open on weekends. The chef says he does the same with baked goods from Sugar Moon Bakery. Cadena hosted a pop-up with the award-winning special effects artist and critically acclaimed baker Dina Cimarusti for Halloween.

He’s held a paella night and punk show in recent months, too. The space is unlike any other in the area. Murals cover the outside walls facing Fullerton and Hamlin avenues. But you enter off the side street through enormous bright yellow gates.

Omarcito’s can be found in the courtyard, in a shipping container-built structure. It’s a hidden gem within a treasure trove. The building owner also built out the original spaces at Taqueria Chingon, Osteria Langhe and The StopAlong among other restaurants around the city.

“The concept for this building in particular was born from a place in Miami called 1-800-Lucky, which is in the center of a food hall like Time Out Market,” Cadena said. “Kind of like Singaporean hawker stalls.”

The event space serves as an airy indoor dining room. You can move your table outside, too. It’s surprising and beautiful, shifting the focus away from the busy street into the bungalow neighborhood and the community gathered within the courtyard.

“This restaurant is the thing that I’ve been wanting to do for 23 years,” the chef said. He previously worked as the general manager at Irazu and then BIG & little’s.

His grandfather was a butcher in his hometown in Cuba. He also worked as a butcher in the Back of the Yards after his family immigrated to this country in 1968.

“He got really tight with the Mexican community here,” Cadena said. “They took him in as one of their own and they loved my grandfather. He had the gift of gab.”

It’s a gift Cadena inherited, along with his name, skipping through generations, cultures and neighborhood history as he tries to explain the reason behind the completas — meal combos — on the menu.

“My grandfather, Omar, while he was in the butcher shop, somebody told him, ‘Why don’t you sell jewelry?’ So he did, as a side hustle,” his grandson said. “And became really, really good at it.” In 1980, his grandfather opened a jewelry shop on Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square. In the ’90s, he sold it to the Torres family, so now it’s called Torres Omar Jewelers.

“I grew up on that street, and there used to be a Cuban cafe where The Logan Theatre bar is now,” Cadena said. “I grew up going in there all the time buying coffee for the old men.”

They sold a complete meal, a completa, and so little Omar, or Omarcito, does, too.

“Even at 6′3″ and 300-plus pounds at 44 years of age, I’m still Omarcito, to everybody or my family at least,” the chef said of the diminutive.

You can get garlic rice, or white rice and black beans, with perfectly caramelized and tender plantains, plus your choice of main dish and a little side salad. That little salad righteously represents an Ecuadorian salsa criollo from his father’s side, transforming out-of-season tomatoes with crisp red onion, fragrant cilantro and sharp lime juice, plus from his mother’s Cuban side, a garlic paste made with fruity extra virgin olive oil.

It’s an especially lovely complement to the golden mojo chicken and cornmeal fried catfish, the latter finished with a striking secret house seasoning. That impeccable crispy catfish, with technique borrowed from Korean fried chicken, is also available in a sandwich with bread, or as a pair of jibarito sliders. They’re not dressed Chicago-style with mayo and American cheese, but simply sandwiched between tostones. Those tostones are made with plantains from Ecuador, which the chef says makes the most important difference in achieving a consistently crunchy rather than starchy result.

Omarcito’s offers a few soft drinks, and you can BYOB, but you will want to order a Cuban coffee, served sweet and so traditionally hot that it will burn your tongue.

It will probably be the first thing ready from your order, which can sometimes be too slow, too salty and too spicy. But those are all the reasons I can’t wait to go back. It can be fast, if they’re not too busy and you order ahead, and as sweet and comforting as you need it to be.

Because need is where it all came from.

“Being from the Caribbean was always fascinating to me in the sense that we are the culmination of raping and pillaging and slavery and colonizing and everything, but out of so many bad things, something good came out of it,” the chef said. “We did. My people did. A culture did. The way that we cooked did.”

Including that revered family recipe for ropa vieja.

“So Ercilia was the one that I reached out to for the recipe,” he said. “She’s my mom’s father’s brother’s wife’s brother’s wife.”

That is, his great-aunt’s sister-in-law.

“My grandmother was a badass cook,” Cardena said. “But when it came to family parties, it was either my Tia Blanca or her sister-in-law, Ercilia. That was the business, those women throwing down in the kitchen.”

He has made the recipe his own with a two-day technique and painstakingly housemade achiote oil.

“Omarcito’s is an extension of my love for serving people and for trying to make people happy,” Cadena said, his voice breaking. “It’s the legacy of my family.”

It’s becoming an impressive legacy of his own, too.

3801 W. Fullerton Ave. (entrance on Hamlin Avenue through the yellow gates)

773-386-1900

omarcitos.com

Open: Saturday and Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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Prices: $3.50 cortadito; $4 empanadas, each, or three for $10; $10 fried fish jibarito; $14 quesa’ropa; $15 garlic mojo chicken completa

Noise: Conversation-friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible, with restrooms on single level

Tribune rating: Excellent, 3 stars

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

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