Batista in South Salt Lake is still cooking up Cuban magic after five years

There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about home-cooked food. No matter the continent it hails from, it’s always self-evident, instantly recognizable. These comfort foods all share an indelible fingerprint, a salve for a day gone South. Just watched your cellphone slide from your hand – a slow-motion dive to an inevitable concrete floor – a mom’s cooking can turn things around via carbohydrates alone.

In a restaurant setting, the best is typically served from what some might disparagingly refer to as holes in the wall; spartan setups where social media attention grabbers play second fiddle to what’s really important: flavor. I’ll take an unadorned dining room over an Instagram wall and blaring neon any day of the week.

No one will ever sigh, “I wish I had more”. If anything, there will be too much. Enough to feed an army, in fact. A stoutly plated home-cooked meal will instead end with overconsumed groans. Presentation might take a back seat to caloric abundance, which in turn should never be counted. Salads, if any, are a perfunctory concession to the fact that, yes, maybe a bite of vegetables should be on the plate somewhere. As I say, the blueprint is the same globally; back in my native England, for example, that happens to be the radioactive green mushy peas alongside a glorious pile of deep-fried spuds and cod.

Batista Food & Grill ticks several of these boxes, and I am apologetically late to the party. The family-run restaurant opened some six years ago now. It was back in 2022 that we first covered this South Salt Lake gem, when our writer Aimee L Cook stopped by and marvelled over the restaurant’s Cuban sandwich. With the capricious volatility of online anonymity, it’s wonderful to see the restaurant still earns near-perfect ratings on both Google and Yelp. It took me until a recent Sunday evening to join in on the fun. I needed that comfort food lift. I need protein, I need starch. Those reviews didn’t let me down.

For starters, Batista’s servings are enormous. When I order take-out, I normally replate and take fancy pictures for you – but in this case, it felt more apropos to take the shots as is – the syrofoam boxes are pushed to their tensile limits. Take a look:

I’ve never stepped so much as a pinky toe in Cuba, yet this was instantly recognizable as home-cooked comfort food. The ingredients may take a radical side-step from those of my own mom’s kitchen, but the resulting plates hit the same soul-soothing touchstones.

The Pan Con Bistec is what we would call a beef butty back in Blightly. The final composition bears little visual resemblance to those of my youth, but the heart and soul of the dish is a xerox. In the UK, we’d use minute steak/sandwich steak – tenderized and thinly sliced beef (rump, sirloin, or topside usually). There’s a similarly thin-sliced cut here, which delivers double bang for your buck flavor-wise, with an arrestingly tangy marination driving the show.

Tomato and lettuce are in the mix, while sharp bite and crunch are delivered by onion and miniature fried potato sticks. Much like the popular Cubano, the sandwich is finished with a good old crush and crisp on the panini press. The whole amalgamation is rewardingly dense.

Masa De Puerco sees golden brown cubes of fried pork generously tossed over a mountain of congri – a Cuban staple of black beans and rice. The simple side dish starts with a sofrito base and mild seasoning from bay leaves. The fried pork is largely left to shine without any gilding, and is every bit the better for it – fork-tender, yet swooningly meaty. Pork ‘n beans, albeit with a deep fryer tucked under the arm, what’s not to love?

Another solid choice is the Ropa Vieja, stewed shredded beef cooked to a sweet finish with tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers, alongside a choice of side dish. Again, the ingredients might differ continent to continent, but the deep flavors of slow cooking are universal hallmarks of food that consoles and cheers.

A last dish I try on this visit – the deep-fried yucca is a delightful add-on for any dish, not that the robust portion sizes need it, mind you. The starchy tuber offers a dense bite of a dipper and pairs excellently with the accompanying rich garlic aioli. The fry is feathery light and brittle, yielding to a substantial interior. I did warn you there’d be moans, and groans, and impending naps – plan accordingly.

Hit a pothole? Lost your keys? Come here and breathe. This is cooking from the heart and soul, singed fingers, and wonky pans; each bite a warm hug – it’s o.k. It’s gonna be alright.

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Stuart Melling

Hi, I’m Stuart, nice to meet you!  I’m the founder, writer and wrangler at Gastronomic SLC.  I’m a multiple-award winning journalist and have written in myopic detail about the Salt Lake City  dining scene for the better part of seventeen years.

I’ve worked extensively with multiple local publications from Visit Salt Lake to Salt Lake Magazine, not least helped to consult on national TV.   Pause those credits, yep, that’s me! I’m also a former restaurant critic of more than five years, working for the Salt Lake Tribune.    I’m largely fueled by a critical obsession with rice, alliteration and the use of big words I don’t understand.   What they’re saying about me: “Not inaccurate”, “I thought he was older”, “I don’t share his feelings”.

Want to know more? This is why I am the way I am.