La Duni

Fantastic. Finally a place that lives up to its recommendations. On McKinney, about a block north of Knox, La Duni is apparently a very hip place to be on a Friday night. Getting there just before 7, however, there was no wait for a meal. Just that certain sense of inferiority that you get when your car gets valet parked just after a lexus suv and just before an audi. Among the patrons were four "sex in the city"esque females, sporting pashminas draped over their shoulders despite the eighty five degrees waiting for them outside. Among those lucky enough to snatch a patio table was Michael Bolton and a female guest. At least I think it was him. But come to think of it, this guy's hair was kind of reddish, whereas Michael Bolton's hair does not currently exist.
But, by taking advantage of the early bird dinner hour, usually reserved for senior citizens and lame-o's, we were given an inside table immediately upon entering and loaded up pretty quickly with some very potent drinks. A mojito for me and a caipirhina for my mint-hating cohort. Accompanying our beverages was some of the finest salsa this side of Encinitas, with some generic but necessary chips.
I wouldn't say that La Duni has Mexican food. They call themselves a Latin bistro, but I wouldn't say that La Duni has Latin food, either (mostly because of my distaste for the ubiquity of the word "Latin". It has some identifiably Cuban fare with a little bit of Venezuelan or some other South American flavor thrown in. Think of plantains, think of mint. Think of pork, here we go. We had some sort of appetizer. It was lovely; plaintains filled with spicy shredded pork and black beans and topped with some kind of cheese. I had tacos al something and Manimal had quesadillas al something with mahi mahi. The only poor planning on the part of the restaurant was making the food so unpronounceable that nobody can possibly spread the word to anyone else about anything except the desserts (highly pronounceable and sooo good). So I guess I'll just tell you about those:
I had the Cuatro Leches cake and this is the superstar for which La Duni is famous. The price is a bit stiff, but who the hell cares? It's manteca cake (which I'm pretty sure means butter cake, so right away you know: nice) soaked in tres leches sauce and topped with cuatro leches sauce and a leche meringue whipped cream hybrid. That makes a startling total of ocho leches. So you're getting twice as many leches as you're paying for! Then it has a drizzle of caramel which makes this a dessert that you don't so much taste in your mouth as you do feel in your loins. Their other desserts look comparable but why on earth would anyone go through the trouble of ordering anything else? Stick with a sure thing. (On a sidenote, that is also the name of my new bestselling self-help book. "Stick with a sure thing: how to settle for second best and keep the status quo humming along nicely")
The service at La Duni was much spicier than the food. I'm pretty sure I must have inadvertantly slept with our waitress's boyfriend because damn, she was spitting fireballs at me all night. Not to mention all the inappropriate touching that she administered on my dinner mate. Did I care? Not with cake in front of me.
Thesis statement: Do not mess with a Cuban woman unless 8 milks are on the line.