On a recent visit to Puerto Rican Street Cuisine, I felt as if I had stumbled upon a small piece of the island in Oakland. Families seated on the sidewalk crunched on dark brown morsels of chicken chicharron. Bad Bunny’s baritone crooning spilled out of the restaurant’s window while Puerto Rico’s flag, planted on the roof of the building like a beacon for homesick Boricuas, billowed in the wind. I came for the canoa, something like a Boriquen hot dog: a fried plantain, sliced on the medial, loaded with peppery beef, melted cheese and lashed with aioli.
Opened this summer, Puerto Rican Street Cuisine marks the anticipated return of Eric Rivera, Oakland’s leading voice for Boricua cooking. Compared to many other metropolitan areas, the Bay Area’s Puerto Rican population is tiny, but the cuisine has a die-hard following, and its culture has been a topic of national discourse following the announcement of Bad Bunny headlining Super Bowl LX, which will take place at Santa Clara’s Levi Stadium next year.
Rivera is best known for Borinquen Soul, a food-truck-turned-restaurant that operated in the back of Two Liquors Market until 2017. It was followed by W.E.P.A., which landed a spot on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.” The latter closed after Rivera was arrested for a robbery charge and served a nearly six-year sentence; he maintains his innocence. The restaurants were something of a launching pad for the expansion of the Bay Area’s relatively small Puerto Rican food scene. Boriqua Kitchen and Casa Borinqueña were both founded by former Borinquen Soul workers, and Rivera hopes his latest restaurant inspires a new cohort.
The menu at Puerto Rican Street Cuisine might read like a compilation of Rivera’s greatest hits — combo plates, empanadas and canoas — but everything on it honors his late mother and grandmother. “I cook because of the women in my life,” he said. “I don’t have my grandmother or my mother with me anymore, but this is what brings me closest to them.”…