Afro-Caribbean wonder Lucia could spark Fairfax's comeback

“Wait, these are bananas?”

My dinner guests look at a piece of cake. We're halfway through a recent dinner at Lucia, a year-old Afro-Caribbean restaurant in Fairfax, and the entire table is stunned.

The pale banana leaves have a familiar sweetness, but they are as thin and al dente as pasta. Layers of Wagyu sofrito are exchanged between them, vibrating with the spicy, earthy bitterness of achiote and pecorino béchamel. A slightly tangy tomato sauce keeps the dish in the sweet spot of heavenly but never overpowering richness. It tastes like the kind of thing you'd want to do to someone you're falling in love with.

Chef Cleophus “Ophus” Hethington grew up in South Florida eating pastelón, a dish made by layering plantains with ground beef cooked with peppers and onions, and lots of cheese. The love for this banana lasagna casserole is prolific, with both Puerto Ricans and Dominicans claiming ownership.

Hethington swaps out the sliced ​​banana for his own pasta, made primarily with mashed banana, a little tapioca starch, and a little all-purpose flour. A Caribbean grandmother might raise an eyebrow, but when you sink a fork into each layer, a universal comfort and familiarity registers.

Lucia is located on a stretch of Fairfax Avenue historically known as a Jewish cultural center. In the 2000s, the street was transformed into a nexus of youth culture, with urban fashion stores and restaurants like Animal. This is the Fairfax Avenue that Lucia's owner, Sam Jordan, fell in love with when he moved to Los Angeles a decade ago. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and saw stores close.

With his first solo venture, Jordan hopes Lucia will be at the center of what he calls the “great Fairfax Avenue comeback.” The front door opens to one of the most impressive rooms in the city. Resplendent 18-foot palm tree sculptures tower over the bar. Multiple seating areas feature plush seating in warm jewel tones of emerald and chartreuse. The most prized seats are the raised semicircular booths hidden in shell-shaped alcoves that overlook the main dining room.

When the restaurant first opened, Adrian Forte was behind the menu of coconut fried chicken, bluefin tuna tartare and a $225 caviar serve. Earlier this year, Jordan hired Hethington, a Navy veteran whose travels in the Caribbean and appreciation of black foodways coincided with his own.

Lucia's dining room features plush seating and raised semi-circular tables that offer a view of the restaurant.

Hethington cooked in restaurants throughout the United States, Italy and Brazil. In Atlanta, he started a pop-up series called Ebi, which means family and hunger in Yoruba, based on his travels in Africa and America. In 2020, he founded his own spice company called Triangular Trade, named for the brutal trade system that brought European goods and weapons to Africa in exchange for enslaved Africans, who were forcibly transported to the Americas, and enslaved labor that produced the sugar, cotton, and tobacco sent to Europe for sale. For Hethington, Black food customs have always been central to the stories he tells on the plate.

There is a pleasant cadence to the menu that begins with “banana expressions.” A mound of golden dorados sit in a perfect circle of banana mole that covers the bottom of the plate. Above, overlapping ribbons of banana chips. You run a chip through the thick mole, musky with smoky plantains and spicy with the spiciness of the habanero and chipotle.

Wagyu burgers are more Panamanian than Jamaican in presentation, shaped like plump half-moons with scalloped edges. The puff pastry is filled with beef cheeks that are rubbed with tomato paste, cured in salt, chiles and spices for 24 hours, and then cooked coq-au-vin style in a braising liquid that is more than half red wine. The process leaves the cheeks so tender they can practically be spread.

Raw presentations like raw albacore or rock shrimp nuggets in fruit-infused coconut water accompanied by a handful of cassava chips lack the finesse and flavor found elsewhere on the menu, but they make good snacks while sipping from a glass of coriander-infused gin and tonic, or an okra martini, salted with lemongrass and thyme and topped with a garnish of pickled okra.

Most of the menu rotation occurs in the “nuff nuff” section, where you can find Oil Down, Grenada’s national dish, reimagined with chunks of sweet lobster and prawns, squares of fried dasheen alongside starchy breadfruit and arugula cooked until it mimics spinach. If Hethington can get the barramundi of choice, look for the grilled fish with green fig leaves. The fish is spread with a Caribbean version of yuzu kosho, spiced with coriander, green peppercorns and sour orange. Wrapped in a banana leaf and left to dry before cooking, the fish takes on a firm, luxurious texture that melts into a pool of coconut and red pepper broth.

Chef Cleophus “Ophus” Hethington in Lucia's dining room.

The okra martini at Lucia features a side of pickled okra.

If diners are looking for Jerk Chicken, they'll have to look elsewhere. Hethington didn't want to cannibalize his menu with the dish, instead compromising with a leg of lamb and a whole Chinese Trini chicken, an homage to the popular takeaway in Trinidad.

The leg is a giant hunk of meat, marinated in a pantry's worth of spices like black cardamom, cinnamon, allspice, marjoram, and cocoa powder. It is simmered for hours until wobbly and tender enough to cut with a feather. Below is a mashed sweet potato, goat cheese, and brown butter that you'd be lucky to find on any holiday table.

When Trini Chinese Chicken arrives, it will require your full attention. The sounds of the gorgeous DJ stationed in the middle of the dining room will fade away (over the course of a single service, “The Thong Song,” “Hypnotize,” “Say My Name,” and every other notable hit from the late '90s and early '00s seemed to be on the playlist), and you'll concentrate on licking every last bit of the dark brown, ginger, chili-infused chicken glaze from your fingers.

Lucía's strongest dessert is pastelitos, a version of the Cuban pastries that Hethington ate for breakfast as a child in Miami. The giant, flaky dumplings ooze a swirling mixture of sweet guava paste and cheese.

At some point during the meal, possibly after your second okra martini softens the boundaries of the day, you get the sense that you're experiencing a piece of history in real time. Lucia feels like a true destination, poised to help usher in the grand revitalization of one of the city's most important streets.

A variety of dishes popular in Lucía, including leg of lamb, pastelón, grilled fish with green fig leaves, and empanadas.