'And it just melts in your mouth': Beef cheeks patacones at Waterloo restaurant really rivet the tastebuds

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For a decade, chef-owner Dan McCowan's Red House Uptown has cooked well-executed, delicious dishes that are unique, and that share insight into our wide culinary world.

Consider the current menu: biltong and Cape Town Caesar salads, a nod to McCowan's travels to southern Africa, join "noodles and bowls," as the website has it, including his daily market-price curry,

Among those noodles, Vincenzo's fresh spaghetti with a ground lamb ragout, tomatoes, spinach, a trio of mushrooms and truffle oil is simply excellent.

Then there are entrees of venison, piri piri Cornish hen and Moroccan veg tagine.

Pan-seared pistachio-crusted pickerel on quinoa is excellent, as are plump mussels in creamy coconut sauce with sourdough toast points.

The cocktail menu, including a half-dozen house inventions, deserves recognition: Ainsley Svitak uses some magic and local spirits from Dillon's and Elora Distilling to whip up a delicious pink Negroni (with homemade vermouth) or something dubbed "Through the Rose-Coloured Glasses."

Over the years, McCowan has increasingly drawn on the Caribbean and West Indies for inspiration — his father is from Guyana — as he studies and explores the cooking and its ingredients.

But the restaurant also gains energy from new cooks joining the crew, as kitchens often do. Now appearing at Red House are patacones: plantains, braised beef cheeks, cotija cheese, pickled chilies and cilantro.

The creation of Colombian-born cook and pastry chef Luisa Fernanda Romero Triana, the dish balanced ideally crispy plantain and exceptionally tender beef.

Romero Triana has been at Red House since February, having arrived in Canada in 2019 and having cooked in France for a year; her experience adds to the Red House culinary zeitgeist.

"We talk about changing or adding dishes here, and I have many ideas in my head," she says, adding that she draws on previous experience at Waterloo's Bauer Butcher.

McCowan and his other cooks — daytime sous chef Jacob Thomas and evening sous chef Annie Street — encourage the free flow of culinary ideas: that has meant patacones on the menu.

"While working with Dan one day, I had this idea of a patacones appetizer, and he said let's make it happen," says Romero Triana.

Green plantains are fried, pressed into a disk shape, marinated with oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper and fried a second time.

For the beef cheeks — she says she learned their proper preparation at the butcher shop — it's a braise of caramelized onions, garlic and tomatoes.

"I use green onions because they’re a good replacement for the onions we have in Colombia," says Romero Triana. "It's then a Colombian bouquet garni, which includes cilantro."

Finally, there's a mild bite from chile de arbol along with cumin, and the beef cheeks braise for four hours.

At service, the beef is combined with a traditional slow-cooked and sofrito-like Colombian hogao sauce.

The mouthful you eat is deep, rich flavour and extraordinarily tender meat perched on crispy plantain.

"Beef cheeks are amazing. It looks like they are going to take a lot of time to process, but at the end of the day the result is very tender, and they take whatever flavour you put in," she says.

"And it just melts in your mouth."

Among Latin-American dishes, including Mexican and Salvadoran available in the region, patacones aren't a dish you find often, according to Romero Triana.

"It sounds cliché, but I want to bring a piece of Colombia, a bit of home, to Canadians who don't know about it," she says.

"And for customers familiar with them, it's nice to hear that patacones take them home or stir memories they had forgotten."

Visit Red House at 30 William St. W., Waterloo, online at www.redhouseuptown.ca or call 226-647-4687.

(Note: Before visiting, check with the venue regarding dish availability and hours of opening.)

Andrew Coppolino of Kitchener is the author of "Farm to Table" and co-author of "Cooking with Shakespeare." He is the 2022 Joseph Hoare gastronomic writer-in-residence at the Stratford Chefs School. Follow him on Twitter at @andrewcoppolino.

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