Jose Laboy focuses on traditional Puerto Rican dishes at Tropical Cabana in St. Roch Market - NOLA.com

Jose Laboy grew up in New York, and became interested in cooking at home. He moved to New Orleans several years ago and recently opened his Tropical Cabana food stall at St. Roch Market. It focuses on Puerto Rican dishes and the cuisine of the Spanish Caribbean. For more information, visit strochmarket.com or @tropicalcabananola on Instagram.

Gambit: How did you learn to cook?

Jose Laboy: I got into cooking because my mom loved to cook, and all the women in my family cooked together. That’s basically how I learned, standing in the kitchen watching. As I grew older, my mom actually taught me. There was always a party or a dinner at my house, so that’s how I learned.

I am very passionate about food. I never went to school for cooking, but I have been cooking since I was 12. I don’t do any high-end techniques or methods. I do traditional home cooking from the Spanish Caribbean – Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. I am Puerto Rican. I grew up in New York. I am from the Bronx, but at 13, my family moved to Long Island. When we went to Long Island, my family from the city would come over every weekend. The kitchen was always open. My mom never knew how to cook in small portions. There were always friends and neighbors coming over to eat.

(My mom) passed away, but eight years later, people still talk about her cooking.

One of the first things I learned from my mom was rice and beans, like a nice Creole yellow rice and red beans. This is the thing where I have a few connections to New Orleans. The food from New Orleans is very similar to the Spanish Caribbean food. Here you have beans and rice separately. We make it separately, and we also make it together. We don’t have jambalaya, we have Caribbean-style paella. You have meat pies, we have empanadas. You have cracklings, we have chicharrons.

Gambit: What did you have in mind for opening a food business?

Laboy: In New York, we have cuchifritos, which are like these restaurants where you get home-style cooking and a lot of snacks. In New York we have the bodegas and the cuchifritos. They started out as Puerto Rican restaurants where you can grab something on the go. Then they evolved in other nationalities — Dominican and Cuban.

When you didn’t want to cook, you’d go grab something from the cuchifritos. You’d find rice and beans, stews and a lot of fried stuff. Spanish Caribbean culture is a fusion of Spanish food from Spain and African food. We do a lot of fritters, codfish and saltfish fritters, balls like shepherd’s pie but in a ball. Roast pork, roast chicken and stuff like that. It was in every neighborhood – in Spanish Harlem, in the Bronx, in Brooklyn. I wanted to bring that with me here.

I have been thinking about (opening a restaurant) for a while. Once I moved to New Orleans, I thought this was my mission.

I had a home-based business here and a little in New York. I make pasteles, which are Caribbean-style tamales. Cooking was a ritual at home. My whole family — me, my mother, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin, my sister, we’d sit at the table and it’s a process to make them. We’d sit together and one person would do the base, another person will do the filling, another person will do the packaging. I’d sell them from home. Word would get around the neighborhood and eventually there was a Facebook page.

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Gambit: What’s on your menu?

Laboy: I want to focus on traditional food. I take traditional Caribbean dishes and instead of rice, make them into sandwiches. Ropa vieja is shredded beef usually eaten with white rice and black beans. Instead of that, we have a ropa vieja po-boy. I have the Cuban (sandwich). I have the jibarito, which is a unique Puerto Rican sandwich. It’s a steak sandwich with steak and onions. Instead of bread, it’s with fried green plantains.

I have a milanesa sandwich, which is breaded chicken. It’s like Italian. In the Bronx and in the Caribbean, we make that. I also make empanadas, potato balls and croquets, which are Cuban. I make bacalaitos, which are like johnny cakes. They’re big flat cakes that we fry, and they have pieces of codfish in it. That is traditional in Puerto Rico, especially if you are by the beach.

Canoas are whole sweet plantains which are filled with ground beef and topped with mozzarella cheese. I also have yellow rice with red beans. I have yuca, which people know as cassava. I have green plantains known as tostones, which are popular in the Caribbean and some South American countries.

I plan on doing mofongo Mondays, because people are asking for it. They’re like, “Where’s your mofongo?” Mofongo is a dish you can have alone with gravy, or you can have it with shrimp Creole or stew. Shrimp Creole is a Caribbean plate. It’s very similar to New Orleans, but we use more garlic and we don’t put celery in it. The seasonings are a little different.

The whole point of me being here is exposing the culture, a different palate, a cuisine. I don’t want to be known as a sandwich place, because our food is so much more than that.

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Jose Laboy focuses on traditional Puerto Rican dishes at Tropical Cabana in St. Roch Market - NOLA.com
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