VIVA NOLA September 2018

NOLA EATS
Congreso Cubano
by Leslie Alm eida
New Orleans is a city of hustlers.
Here, big thinkers with modest
budgets can turn a side gig into a
day job. Or night job, if that?s
more your thing. And that?s
exactly what Orlando ?Orly? Vega
did when he moved here from
Miami and launched Congreso
Cubano, a pop-up dining
experience with Cuban roots.
I asked Orly about his journey
with Congreso, what inspires his
menus, and the future.
What brought you to New
Orleans from Miami?
That was almost seven years
ago.
Did you have intentions to
create a culinary experience
upon arriving, or was it a
happy accident?
The food came a bit later out of a
mix of culinary homesickness, a
desire to showcase my family's
food, and a deep interest in the
historic links between New
Orleans and Havana and the idea
came out of necessity. I had left
my 9-to-5 and decided to make
the best of my newfound free
time while I was job searching.
The job market was rough, so I
kept making sandwiches to
entertain myself and would set up
on stoops or work out of the car.
It?s nice not having a rental
overhead, but you give up a lot of
control to property owners,
weather, transportation logistics,
etc. Not to mention that
everybody wants a cut of your
sales until you can prove that you
know how to fill a room.
For a city whose culinary
landscape derives great
influence from Latin cultures,
yet had few Cuban eateries,
was it difficult to explain to
customers that Cuban food
isn't "tacos and margs"?
No, it really wasn't. These days
there's a big buzz around Cuba
Quite honestly, there wasn't much
and a surprising amount of our
that wasn't calling me to New
guests have had the chance to
Orleans. It was not the food at
travel there. It?s been a fun
that time. I regularly visited for
Jazz Fest and, being a musician What were some of the hurdles
experience listening to our
myself, it was always somewhere you faced, and what kept you
guests' differing expectations of a
I wanted to be. Simply put, I had going in those challenging
dish. Since Cuban cuisine has
a bad year in Miami, so I threw early days as a pop-up.?
continued to evolve throughout
the diaspora, you'll find guests
everything in my car and took up When you are popping-up, that expect very different
a friend's invitation in Mid-City. everything is a potential hurdle. interpretations of a dish.
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