Review: Blithe Puerto Rican Restaurant (Richmond, VA)

Review:  Recently, I paid a visit to Richmond, Virginia to see a friend.  As I found out, Richmond is a great place for budget foodies such as myself to go.  One day, I decided to try out Blithe Puerto Rican Restaurant.  I had never had Puerto Rican food before, although I knew some things about it (as many of you probably know, I completely nerd out on regional cuisines).

It did not disappoint.  I had a shrimp dish, the name of which I can't remember.  It was cooked in a sort of green mojo sauce (or something similar, I can't remember it exactly), and was delicious.  I also had a side of mofongo (a fried plantain-based dish).  What I do remember about the shrimp dish was that it was very delicately spiced, just enough to have a flavor complementing the shrimp, but not too much so that the spice was dominant.  The plantains were excellent as well.  Again, the sweet, starchy flavor came through very well.

Geography:  Puerto Rican cuisine is a fusion cuisine.  Among its influencers are Taino, Arawak, West African, American, South Pacific, South American, various Arabic, and various European cuisines (especially Spanish cuisine). So, how did Puerto Rico have influences from six different continents (North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania), and still be able to mesh it all into one truly global cuisine, with its regional tie to a small island territory in the Caribbean?

There are two reasons: one, a variety of ingredients through trade and immigration.  Puerto Rico has been under the control of the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, and the Untied States.  Both had expansive territory and extensive trade during their time.  Many ingredients and preparations influenced Puerto Rican cuisine, and that's why it's a global cuisine.

But how did they make it work?  This leads us to the native Taino and Arawak cuisines, which have long-standing traditions of adaptability in cooking.  For example, because corn is hard to grow in Puerto Rico due to hurricanes, they used yucca instead, whose plants tend not to blow away as easily. Adaptability is key to creating dishes and also to meshing cuisines together to form other, distinct cuisines.