Saucy, soupy pasta dishes are the unsung heroes of the sazón-gilded world of Latin American cooking. Across Mexico, you’ll always get a sopa de fideo or coditos (elbow pasta) in a tomato-heavy chicken broth as your first course if eating comida corrida. La Casita Mexicana still offers that whenever you order a main course at their restaurant in Bell.
In El Salvador, it’s common to add a handful of pasta to Sopa de Gallina, as verified with our resident Salvi, Karina Soriano. However, the further south you go through South America, the less the average Los Angeles diner knows. That’s where the brilliance of Cali, Colombia-born Carlos Jurado comes in to pull off a whole concept dedicated to the overlooked Latino pasta variations.
Handmade pasta always cuts deep, but add the sazón of Latin America, and you have something even more unforgettable that L.A. has never seen before. At least not on the level that Jurado is doing two days a week at his weekly “Fuego Lento” pop-up at his Long Beach restaurant, Selva.
“Pasta was one of the first things that made me love food,” Jurado tells L.A. TACO about this concept he’s wanted to do for years. “It just became a fixation that I tried to fine-tune and was ready now.”
Inspired by a pesto pasta he had at Christy’s, which used to be in this same location, he first started offering dishes like plantain gnocchi as a special. But now it’s the only menu he offers on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. His sazón-boosted pastas are a way to keep his customers satisfied for less, on both ends.
There’s a heaping bowl filled with tender casarecce, yeasted butter, smoked and then grilled picanha, and melded with a jidory chicken stock-enriched sauce for $28. The pesto for his tallarines is made with basil, hoja santa, smoked cashews, and Colombian queso fresco.
If you’re pescatarian, you can order any of Fuego Lento’s four pastas and pay an extra $32 for three meaty octopus tentacles on top. For the time being, Jurado sources all his handmade pasta from Nonna Mercato, but he hopes to make it from scratch himself one day.
“It’s helping with food costs, too,” he admits. In a time when restaurants are seeing their food costs and overhead soar.
Regarding the brothiness of each pasta, Jurado admits that it isn't as traditional but more out of selfishness. “I just hate dry pasta and want you to have enough sauce or broth all the way to the last bite," he says.
Eventually, Juarado will be adding wok-fried pasta that tastes like wok hei, too, which is more Peruvian. “They’re our neighbors after all,” he says.
At just one month in, the concept is proving to be a success, with mostly locals coming in for a plate. In Long Beach, when most noodle shops close early, it’s one hell of a supper when finished with traditional dulce de leche-dipped Colombian obleas (wafers) for dessert and an anise aguardiente.
Fuego Lento at Selva ~ 4137 E. Anaheim St. Long Beach, CA 90804
