La bombonera puerto rico menu: LA BOMBONERA, San Juan – Restaurant Reviews, Photos & Phone Number

La Bombonera in Old San Juan

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Back in the 1970s, I was a teenager growing up in Puerto Rico and my mother was young, strong-willed and fashion-conscious. She was always ready to dress me in the latest fads, as best as we could afford, like midi skirts with suede boots and a gown straight from a bridal magazine for my quinceañera.

Together we’d shop for fabrics or accessories at the specialty stores in Old San Juan, and then, before heading home, we’d stop at a coffee shop called La Bombonera and sit in a booth. She’d have a café con leche while we ate mallorcas, the puffy, sweet, soft buns found all over the island.

Sometimes the mallorca is used as a sandwich roll, most commonly for grilled ham and cheese. But at La Bombonera, we purists liked the coiled bun simply sliced in two, buttered up and pressed flat between the hot steel plates of a griddle. Then it was showered with a flurry of confectioners’ sugar, from the tap-tap-tap of plastic shakers. That ritual — slice, butter, transform — was performed hundreds of times throughout the day as customers at the counter watched.

That warm bun could never be mistaken for the “mallorca sweet bread” that is sold at Starbucks, which is handed to you at room temperature in a brown paper bag. La Bombonera’s mallorca melted in your mouth. You ate it from a plate, with a fork, with the reverence it was due.

The author began going to La Bombonera in Old San Juan as a teenager with her mother.CreditÁngel Franco/The New York Times

I remained loyal to La Bombonera through adulthood, even after I moved to the States. It was a mandatory stop on my annual trips home, just like the kiosks and shacks that sell seafood fritters and fresh coconut water near Isla Verde or Luquillo Beach. The first time I brought my boyfriend, and now husband, to Puerto Rico, he shunned the fried food but took to the mallorcas like a native.

I’ve tried plenty of mallorcas, which are named for the Spanish island where they originated (and where they are known as ensaimadas), at other restaurants and bakeries. Not one has come close to the Bombonera version. Some are not crisp to the bite, or juicy enough inside. Some are too chewy or spongy. Some have a hint of lemon or citrus, which for me ruins the flavor.

The owners of La Bombonera plan to reopen the restaurant and are working out the details, said the Puerto Rico Manufacturing Extension, a nonprofit business consulting group assisting in the effort.

But during our last visit to the island, in January, I walked by a shuttered restaurant, its red awning and tiled facade still intact with the name of the original owners, “Puig y Abraham,” Spaniards who opened the place in 1902.

It became clear that if I wanted to taste a mallorca like La Bombonera’s again, I might have to do some hunting. Puerto Ricans swear by mallorcas from a few other bakeries, and by those sold by Panificadora Pepin, a bread company in the San Juan area that takes mail orders. But I wondered if I could find the Bombonera recipe somewhere, so I could conjure up the real thing. If not, maybe I could track down a worthy substitute.

The restaurant’s closing last year set the author off on a quest to recreate its puffy, sweet buns.CreditÁngel Franco/The New York Times

Finding a good recipe for home cooks was not a given. According to Yvonne Ortiz, author of the cookbook “A Taste of Puerto Rico,” Puerto Ricans usually buy their breads and pastries, not make them at home. She included her mother’s mallorca recipe in her cookbook; her mother learned to make the buns in cooking school in Puerto Rico one summer. Ms. Ortiz, who grew up on the island and now lives in California, understood my quest. “The mallorca is such a staple,” she said. “It’s one of those comfort foods when you’re away from the island. ”

By the time I spoke with Ms. Ortiz, I had already found a promising recipe on the Noshery, a cooking blog. The recipe, which was credited to the Web site the Recipe Link, drew raves from both devotees of La Bombonera and newbies to what one commenter described as “the lightest, fluffiest, melt-in-the-mouth-like-cotton-candy sweet roll I’ve ever eaten.”

I’m no baker, but the recipe seemed simple enough. On a Sunday morning, I prepared the dough mixture and then let it rise. I ran into trouble once I had to form the sticky dough into the mallorca’s coiled shape. But a dusting of extra flour on my hands, the dough and the cutting board solved the issue, and I was able to create a dozen fat buns that bore a pretty strong resemblance to the familiar mallorca form. As they baked, the kitchen, and then the house, soon filled with the unmistakable sweet, buttery aroma of a Puerto Rican bakery. They were my tropical version of Proust’s madeleine. I clapped in excitement.

The soft, plump buns came out of the oven after 15 minutes. They were gigantic and some were almost flat, looking like melted cheese. The bottoms of some were overdone. But I didn’t care about looks as much as achieving the right flavor.

After the mallorcas cooled, I tried one plain. It had a nice, fresh, pleasantly sweet flavor and could be nibbled just like that. I then followed La Bombonera’s ritual for two others: slicing them in half and spreading each side with butter. I also buttered up the two flat griddles of the sandwich press I had bought for the occasion and toasted each mallorca for three minutes.

I plated my flat, greasy concoctions, one for me and one for my husband, and sprinkled them generously with confectioners’ sugar. (Through trial and error, I realized that there’s no such thing as too much butter or sugar when it comes to preparing mallorcas. In fact, the more butter and sugar, the more Bombonera-like.)

The result gave us joy. We bit in and experienced that familiar taste, with the texture of custard.

I was so confident I had cracked the code that I decided I would hold a blind tasting the next time Puerto Rican friends were over for dinner. I also had mallorcas shipped from Panificadora Pepin so we could compare them. The package arrived with a sheet of dough, which was divided into tear-off buns, and a plastic packet of confectioners’ sugar. My husband and I found those delicious, but a bit too doughy. For good measure, I made traditional Spanish ensaimadas, too, which used lard instead of butter. Those were the least moist of the three. (So much for lard.)

The night of the dinner party, five friends took part in the tasting, including two who were familiar with La Bombonera. I passed around the trays of bread. One friend picked my mallorca as the winner because it tasted like French toast. Another guest said its flakiness reminded her of a croissant.

A croissant? French toast? When are these people leaving?

I was feeling pretty deflated until the guest who mentioned croissants deemed my mallorca the closest to the Bombonera’s.

So it wasn’t exactly the same mallorca. And after the fact, I found out that another restaurant in Old San Juan called Cafeteria Mallorca, founded back in the day by the original owners of La Bombonera, uses vegetable shortening instead of lard or butter. I may try that next.

But really, it didn’t matter. For in that one brief moment, the mallorca took me back to the restaurant booth where a mom and her daughter bonded over a favorite food.

By MIREYA NAVARRO

The New York Times

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La Bombonera – The Noshery

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Before my life was consumed with moving and madness, I got to spend a wonderful vacation with my husband visiting family back home in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is a place that I insist everyone visit and it’s not only because I am from there and of course love it, it because it’s a wonderful place to be. My little island is full of many wonders and delights, especially if we are talking about food.

One of the places I must always visit when I am in Puerto Rico is La Bombonera. It is an iconic and historical restaurant in Old San Juan on Calle (street) San Francisco.

When I was a “know it all” teenager my family moved back to Puerto Rico.  My mother, sister and I spent many Saturday mornings having breakfast at La Bombonera. The plan would be to go into Old San Juan for a “paseo” and maybe a tiny bit of shopping. We would park in “el parking de Dona Fela” at the bottom of Old San Juan. Right outside of the parking complex was a plaza where artist would sell their work and an old man with a little cart and a bell would be selling coconut, cherry, and passion fruit “helado”. We would make our way up the steep hill until we reached Calle San Francisco. I remember always being very excited for what awaited me, the fabulous and wonderful mallorca. The thought of the warm fluffily round swirly bun, buttered and covered in powder sugar would make my heart go pitter-pat.

When Obed and I were in Puerto Rico we awoke one morning with nothing to do, I suggested we go for a drive and then have lunch at La Bombonera. That is when Obed told me he had never been. I was in dumbfounded shock when he told me this. I exclaimed, “How could you have never been to La Bombonera,what kind of Puerto Rican are you?” He just shrugged and said, “I’ve just never been”. Total disbelief! This had to be rectified immediately.

La Bombonera was exactly as I remember it, nothing had changed, except the uniforms. They use to wear white button-down shirts with black bow ties and red vests, but now they just wear blue polos. Other then that everything was the same. Same menu, same counter, same Cuban espresso machine from the turn of the century and same delicious treats waiting for you in the window.

We were seated in an orange colored “leather” booth all the way in the back of the dinning room where the A/C was the coolest. Since it was lunch time we were quickly presented with a plate of sliced buttered Cuban bread. Oh sweet wonderful bread, the salt of the Earth. I would eat my body weight in this bread if physically possible, but I was conservative and considered the meal to come. I asked the server for a cold glass of sweet and tart passion fruit juice and started to review the menu.

My eyes were immediately draw to the “Chicharrones de Pollo” one of my favorite dishes. Nuggets of bone-in, skin-on chicken, dredged in flour and fried three times. Hello lover! How could you not love that? It’s like fried chicken and chicken nuggets all in one, but so much better. This fried chicken is not like the American fried chicken you maybe use to. The crispiness of the lightly floured chicken is similar to what you get from pork cracklings. In fact that is what the name is in English, chicken cracklings. I had my “chicarrones” with yellow rice and fried sweet plantains. The sweet plantains where a perfect pairing with my crispy salty “chicarrones de pollo”. Obed order the exact same thing, because you know…he wants to be like me.

I cleaned my plate down to the last little bit. Unfortunately that meant that I left no room for a delicious sweet treat that was waiting for me in the window by the cashier. However I could not justify leaving “La Bombonera” without one of it’s famous mallorcas. We rolled ourselves up to the front to pay and asked the cashier to give us some mallorcas to go. They sat there like a puppy in the window, tempting you with their sweetness and softness. How can you say no to that?

By the time we made our way back home we digested just enough of our lunch and warmed up the mallorcas, spread them with butter and enjoyed them with a hot cup of coffee. Everything was exactly the same…especially the mallorcas.

If you would like to have your own mallorocas or chicharrones de pollo at home checkout these old posts from my archives. I do not claim the mallorca rolls to be like La Bombonera’s but they are still good. The dough is very sticky and can be difficult, just flour as you work with it and try not to over work the dough.

Malloca

Chicharrones de Pollo (Puerto Rican Fried Chicken)

Categories: Life Tags: bread, chicken, Mallorca, puerto rico

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Beach holidays in Argentina 2022

Argentina is perhaps the only state on the entire South American continent that captivates tourists so much with its versatility and gives vivid impressions to absolutely all people who decide to visit this country.

You should definitely start your travels in Argentina from its picturesque capital – Buenos Aires . This city is a typical metropolis, in the very sense in which we are all used to interpreting this expression – noisy, impressive in terms of its territory and population. But, in Buenos Aires, something completely different is valued – this is its stunning architecture, which has much in common with the French, is its prototype, the designation “South Paris” has even been attached to the capital of Argentina. Here’s the thing – at 19th century, a large-scale earthquake occurred here, and many buildings were destroyed, and in order to fill this gap, French architects were specially invited, who did a good job of restoring the city. Since then, in Argentina, a lot of fountains, squares, a huge number of monumental buildings have appeared, to the construction of which the French architectural style was applied, which simply cannot be confused with any other. The most famous area of ​​Buenos Aires is rightfully La Boca, which has preserved the traditional migratory spirit of past centuries. The buildings in La Boca are painted in bright colors, and the color palette varies dramatically depending on what nationality the resident living in this house was, and Argentina is really an international country, but, in fairness, it should be said that most of these same settlers were from Spain , and the rest is represented by other nationalities to a greater or lesser extent. In addition, the Bombonera stadium is located in this area, where the legendary Diego Maradona, perhaps the most famous Argentine “of all times and peoples”, played his first football match.

Argentines consider Iguazu Falls their main pride – luxurious, huge streams of water fly into the abyss with great speed, watching such a picture, you get genuine delight from what you see. Those tourists whose priority is a beach holiday should definitely visit the Mar del Plata beach resort. This resort is famous for its endless beaches, five-star hotels and famous nightclubs. Those people who travel to Argentina in anticipation of seeing various architectural values, not only within Buenos Aires, but also in other parts of the country, will be pleasantly surprised by what they see in the city Cordoba . This city is famous for its various cathedrals, historical museums – most of which are made in a stunning colonial style. Argentinean land is not only remarkable for this, lovers of ski resorts can safely head to Patagonia – it is here that they are considered the best in all of South America, the bright components of the resorts themselves are the majestic plains and snow-covered slopes Andes , the view of which allows you to feel the real Aesthetic pleasure. If Buenos Aires is called the “Paris of the South”, then Patagonia is boldly called the “Second Switzerland”.

Whatever type of holiday you choose in Argentina, you will be pleasantly surprised by what you see, among other things, in absolutely every region of the country, without fail, on all the embankments, couples dance passionate tango – a dance that is the hallmark of Argentina. It is not at all problematic to take a lesson from professionals – in any dance club, you will be given this opportunity. Make up your mind and come to this country, remember that Argentina is universal, and you will definitely find here what you like.

How much is a plane ticket to Argentina?

Below is a price calendar with which you can find out the price of a plane ticket to Argentina from Russia and back. By default, the departure city of Moscow is indicated in the calendar, but you can choose any other Russian city, for example, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Krasnodar, etc. specified date for the various airlines that operate flights to Argentina.

Boca Juniors – Platense – 19.02.2023 (Argentina. Primera Division)

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