Dominican Chimi, Groton

Dominican Chimi
cuisine: Dominican
entrées: $7.99 – $13.99
address: 110 Poquonock Road, Groton
phone: (860) 449-8551
credit cards: All major

3 1/2 Stars… Recommended

I have just as great a passion for authentic, home-style, ethnic food as I do for the high-falutin’ creations of our state’s top chefs. Of course, much of what passes for authentic ethnic food in the Nutmeg State is anything but. It’s a truism, but the best ethnic eateries seem to be those where a significant portion of the clientele originates from the owners’ homeland. Even that, however, is no guarantee. All too often, ethnic food is watered down to accommodate perceived American tastes or suffers from difficulty obtaining authentic ingredients. In either case, a great disservice is done both to the dining public and to these foreign cuisines.

And yet, what can one expect when so many restaurateurs complain they can sell neither chicken on the bone (just breast meat) nor whole fish (just fillets)? Many patrons even find shrimp and prawns distasteful with part of the shell left on, never mind the stunning shrinkage that occurs during cooking when the shells are removed. We, the dining public, have had a major hand in encouraging such mediocrity, and it’s up to us to undo it. It’s our responsibility to praise and patronize the restaurants which exhibit the courage to do things right. This is especially true when it comes to ethnic restaurants.

In Connecticut, however, despite our wealth and sophistication, there are all too few of us capable of identifying good ethnic food. Even our restaurant critics fail us. I’m astonished when some of our most prominent critics (and even a celebrity chef) repeatedly praise merely passable ethnic restaurants as authentic (especially Chinese and Mexican). Sadly, such statements betray the limits of their expertise. Besides, it’s not enough to say that an ethnic eatery’s food is authentic—it should also be good. Consider that the greasy spoon down the street may be serving authentic American food, but it’s probably not of a particularly high quality.

It’s important that we praise good authentic cooking when we find it and demand it when we don’t. An example of the latter happened when I visited a popular Portuguese restaurant in Bridgeport and ordered the classic bread and garlic soup of the Alentejo region. My companions and I were forced to send our soups back—something I almost never do. The problem was, the yolk of the poached egg served atop the soup was cooked solid and therefore couldn’t be punctured to release runny egg into the garlic broth. The restaurant probably figured the gringos wouldn’t know the difference. It’s important to show that we do.

I have a fondness for Dominican food, having traveled to the fair island of Hispaniola in 1998 with a friend named Porfirio Guzman who was a former minister and local politician there. Yeah, not every country shares our passion for maintaining a separation of church and state. In the Dominican Republic, I experienced a great deal of home and restaurant cooking, and unlike in this country, the two are not widely different, except perhaps in resorts.

My fondness for the Dominican people is even greater than my fondness for Dominican food. The warmth and hospitality they showed me matched or exceeded that of any country to which I had traveled. When I scheduled my trip, my father was ailing but his doctors assured me that he could be expected to grace this earth a while longer. About ten days into my trip, my wallet and passport were swiped from my bag while I sat in an outdoor café in Samaná (the Samaná Peninsula has probably developed greatly since I was there due to the addition of an international airport). Shortly thereafter, my family warned me that I had better cut my Caribbean trip short if I wished to say goodbye to my father. My lack of a passport was likely to delay my return too long, but the townspeople turned out and literally beat the bushes until it was recovered by the side of a road. Thanks to this incredible act of kindness, I was able to rush to California and say goodbye to my father before he slipped into a coma a day later.

While on this Dominican trip, I marveled at little roadside stands selling foil-wrapped baked potatoes and jars of candied orange slices. I ate gloriously fresh fish and shrimp. I bought fresh picked oranges from the back of a dump truck passing through a neighborhood I was visiting. I watched my friend, already a grandfather, belt a softball so far that it just about went out of sight, a vivid reminder of that country’s proud baseball tradition.

Open just three months, Dominican Chimi is located in a little house in Groton just a few blocks from Electric Boat. Not to confuse readers, but just as “tortilla” carries a different meaning in Mexico than it does in Spain, in the Dominican Republic, “chimichurri” or “chimi” refers not to the famous Argentine sauce but, as near as I can tell, to a sandwich or the sauce that adorns it. Dominican Chimi is owned by husband and wife Fradwin and Janelly Marmol, while Janelly’s mother, Carmen Jimenez, is the savior of the kitchen. The family hails from Santiago Rodriguez, a town in the center of the Dominican Republic. Dominican Chimi is a white tablecloth joint, with a seven-stool bar, a couple of booths and a handful of tables, including one set into the window alcove. A Dominican flag is draped under a high-mounted TV set to a low volume.

Our fists wrapped around bottles of Presidente beer ($3.50), my companion and I began noshing on a generous appetizer sampler ($9.99) that included two empanadas (choice of cheese, chicken, beef or shrimp), two pieces of pan con aguacate and a pile of yuca fritas. The flavorful empanadas were fat, half-moon-shaped, fried pastries, one with shreds of chicken and bits of onion and red bell pepper, the other with ground beef, raisins, green pepper and olive. The pan con aguacate featured slices of bread with chunks of buttery avocado and smaller pieces of tomato and onion in lime juice. Finally, the yuca fries were perfectly cooked and surprisingly tasty and light. Accompanying the appetizer sampler was a pale orange chimi sauce whose contents the restaurant wouldn’t divulge, but it tasted as if it was a blend of ketchup and mayonnaise with perhaps a little relish. Whatever its composition, it was ideal accompaniment to both the empanadas and the yuca fries.

There were only two of us, so we didn’t try Dominican Chimi’s secret island salad, whose dressing appeared to be based on the chimi sauce, judging from its appearance at another table. Still, we managed in effect to try three main dishes by making one of them a mar y tierra (land and sea) dinner that included two items. The other dinner we chose was a chicken stew. Most of Dominican Chimi’s entrées were priced under $10. Dinners came with a choice of seasoned rice with red, black or pigeon peas, white rice, yellow rice with corn, golden noodle rice, fried plantains, fried sweet plantains, the aforementioned yuca fritas, French fries and fried yuca fritters.

The mar y tierra ($13.99) included both bistec encebollado (steak with onion) and camarones al ajillo (shrimp in garlic sauce), both available separately. Similar, actually, to Filipino bistek, the bistec encebollado featured thin, intensely flavored pieces of meat that benefited from long cooking with perhaps garlic, vinegar, black pepper and oregano and possibly some soy sauce. Shrimp in garlic sauce are frequently found in Dominican restaurants, but I’m not sure what gives some, including Dominican Chimi’s, a reddish cast.

Pollo guisado, or stewed chicken ($8.99), is another Dominican favorite and, while recipes can vary widely, it’s likely to include a lot of garlic, pepper and oregano, not to mention a little tomato paste, and gets its dark color from browned sugar. Two thighs and a drumstick were delicious, and a welcome respite from tasteless white meat chicken breast.

From that selection of sides, we chose traditional soupy red beans (more complex than they appear) and rice. We also had tostones, most Dominicans’ favorite side dish, those little round disks that manage to be crunchy, chewy, soft and starchy all at once. My hand was spattered with hot oil when I helped cook them in a friend’s house during my visit to the Dominican Republic. To make them, one cuts one-inch segments of unripe plantain, deep fries them, squishes them down into round disks with the bottom of a jar, and then refries them again briefly. Tostones are at their best when they’re fresh and hot, and Fradwin made a point of urging us to consume them before they cooled.
Since the flan ($3.99) had sold out, a victim of its own popularity, we ordered mango milkshakes ($3). Unlike many American “milkshakes,” these really were made with milk and not with ice cream. Besides milk and mango, these delicious creamy shakes included evaporated milk and even a little vanilla extract.

Dominican Chimi serves the best Dominican food I have enjoyed since leaving the Dominican Republic, food that would have been among the better food I had while visiting that island nation as well. While I have tried Dominican food in a handful of places in Connecticut, including a C-Town Supermarket in Waterbury and a tiny place called Mi Bohio in New Haven that was subsequently bought out by Puerto Ricans, this was Dominican cooking on a much higher level. If you have a love of Dominican food or any curiosity about Caribbean or Latin American cuisines, this little charmer is well worth seeking out.