Monthly Feature
Follow the travels of our new fictitious food critique!

Hi everyone, I’m Terry Luther, a lifelong Foodie. Come join me on my travels across this great country of ours from sea to shining sea, enjoying each stop along the way in some way/shape/form. The purpose of this blog series is to provide a classy, respectable perspective on different styles of cuisine in different regions of America. Please enjoy the journal below where I document me eating the sh-t out of stuff!

Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to go try a new Cuban fusion restaurant just off famous Tobacco Road in North Carolina called “The Cuban Cigarette” – it was a blend of Cuban cuisine and North Carolina comfort food and it was delish to say the least. To say the most it was “holy shit, Jesus just baked something in my mouth and it makes his Manna from heaven taste like ass”! Yes, it was great and not just the food.

Everything was charming, from the fatigue-wearing, cigar smoking fake-bearded hostess who greeted us at the door with a “Good evening, everyone is welcome to The Cuban Cigarette and all portions are equal!” to the Lucky Strike smoking waitress who never let my Sweet Tea get all the way to the bottom… Now for the “meat and potatoes” {I use that phrase to describe everything since I’m a food critic} of this post – the F-O-O-D!

For an appetizer I had “Bobby Hurley’s fav”, Ajiaco {Cuban influence} con Grits {Carolina influence}. It’s the national dish of Cuba. Ajiaco is a thick soup that has a main ingredient of pork served with our national comfort breakfast of grits on the side. Anytime a restaurant dares to combine TWO national dishes into one dish there’s a chance for a food war… but then there’s also a chance for a Marshall Plan-esque working together of two distinct entities to build something bigger and better than what each could have done on their own and the payoff is exponential. Let’s just say that dish gave me an exponential mouth pay-off all over my tongue!

For dinner I had the deep-fried {Carolina influence} Ropa Vieja {Cuban influence}, a dish made of shredded pork shank. It’s marinated and cooked in a creole tomato sauce and typically served with a rice dish. The pork shank in my Ropa Vieja was deep-fried just enough to zero out any upside one gets from eating pork. My waitress and her cloud of second hand smoke swung by and all I could muster upon being asked by her harsh, raspy “Well how is it?” was a guttural “oooohhhhh”. This means one of two things on Tobacco Road:

1. someone is dying of lung cancer
2. someone has just bitten into something awesome!

All-in-all I would give the Cuban Cigarette 21 Terry’s {My scale is based on how many times I would possibly eat there in one week if my choices were the place I’m writing about or my wife’s cooking}.

Well fellow foodies – until next month, say la vee! {that’s French}