New Puerto Rican restaurant brings a taste of 'the forgotten city' to Fayetteville
Fayetteville’s newest Puerto Rican restaurant, La Isla Menos — named for the owner's Puerto Rican hometown of Morovis, "the forgotten city" — opened July 26 on South Reilly Road.
Morovis got the nickname in 1853 when it was the only municipality in Puerto Rico that did not report cases of the cholera epidemic. In reporting on the outbreak, newspapers used the phrase “la isla menos Morovis” or “all of the island but Morovis.”
For owner Ana Arroyo, 39, the phrase is a source of pride. Her mother, Damaris Arroyo, owned and operated a catering business, store and cantina in Morovis under the same name for more than a decade, Ana Arroyo said.
Now, Damaris Arroyo serves “totally authentic food” as the head chef of the Fayetteville restaurant, Ana Arroyo said through server Viviana Quiles who acted as her translator.
“It’s exactly the food we would eat in Puerto Rico,” she said.
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A taste of Morovis
The house specialty is mofongo, plantains mashed with garlic and butter topped with octopus, shrimp and conch in criollo sauce — a sauce of finely sliced onions, vinegar, tomatoes, cilantro, chili peppers and other herbs and spices. The dish is served in a “pilon,” a wooden bowl with a pedestal.
Arroyo and her family made a special trip to Morovis to get the handcrafted bowls because they could not find them in the U.S.
“Our luggage was full of them so you can only imagine how heavy that was,” Arroyo said.
Behind the bar of the dine-in restaurant is a fresh orange juice machine that splits each orange down the middle, then squeezes it to extract all its juice.
“In Puerto Rico, you just go to your backyard to pick an orange to make juice," Quiles said. "That’s how we do it here, totally fresh with no sugar or anything."
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A growing presence in Fayetteville
Arroyo said she is glad there is more of a Puerto Rican presence in Fayetteville than when she and her daughter, Aleisha Torres, 20, moved here 11 years ago. Torres helps her mom manage the restaurant.
Arroyo said she is excited to share her culture’s food with the community, and as a family-run restaurant, wants her guests to feel like family.
“It’s been steadily busy. We’ve had people from Venezuela, Columbia, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico come in,” she said.
In the future, she hopes to expand to include multiple locations and a Puerto Rican grocery store.
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The details
Location: 594 S Reilly Road
Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday
Phone: 910-920-2477
On the web: Facebook.com/La-Isla-Menos-Restaurant-100941905731911
Food, dining and business reporter Taylor Shook can be reached at tshook@gannett.com.
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This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: La Isla Menos brings Puerto Rican food to Fayetteville
