Caliente - Park and Sheppard

We love this place for its outdoor seating and it's only about 8 blocks from our house. The food has a New Orleans leaning. They have shrimp and grits, jambalaya and collard greens on the menu. We started with the conch fritters. They were nicely fried and the sauce, a tamarind tartar sauce, was very good. For my main course, I went for the flank steak with chipotle steak sauce. It was served with roasted potatoes and garlicky broccoli. The steak was wonderful although I was only able to eat half of it (see the end of the post to hear more about what I did with the leftovers!). The broccoli could have been steamed a little longer and not topped with so much grease. The potatoes were perfectly cooked but also a little greasy. MTH had the pork tenderloin. He doesn't remember the flavors but he liked it a lot. He also likes the beer selection at Caliente. His favorite for the night was Acme Pale Ale.

Even though some of my food was too greasy, I would recommend checking out this place especially if you can it out on the front porch like we did. The view is not the best (a 7-11) but it's covered and we've never had too many people smoking around us. Plus, I'll bet you can ask them not to put so much of the butter sauce on the veggies. I just didn't know I needed to ask.

What did I do with the leftovers? For lunch the following day, I sauteed some green peppers, onions and mushrooms. Then, I added slices of the steak, chopped potatoes and broccoli to the pan. Voila, we had awesome steak sandwiches! Even, MTH liked it.