A restaurant serving Colombian food has debuted in Allen: Curuba Colombia Kitchen is a mom-and-pop featuring authentic Colombian dishes now open at 1546 Stacy Rd. #165, at Lost Creek Village, in a former mochi doughnut shop.
Named for a South American fruit, Curuba is from husband-and-wife Leo and Kelly Vargas, natives of Bogota, Colombia who have both worked in the hospitality industry, most recently at Omni Hotel. Kelly is the chef; she studied at Gato Dumas culinary school in Colombia.
This is their first restaurant, and their goal is to offer healthy, homemade Colombian food, without GMO or MSG ingredients and nitrate-free proteins. The menu is also 80 percent gluten free, including their arepas and their breading for fried items.
The menu includes Colombian trademarks such as arepas, the satisfying corn patties filled with ingredients such as cheese or shredded meat; and empanadas with choice of fillings from chicken, brisket, vegan, shrimp, or ground beef, three to an order for $12.
There are fried green plantains with choice of Spanish creole sauce or creamy mushroom sauce; and bandeja paisa, a traditional Colombian platter with a variety of meats, plus beans and rice, named after the Paisa region of Colombia where it originates.
Many temptations at Curuba Colombian KitchenCuruba
They serve alcohol with standard cocktails but also drinks made with aguardiente, a Colombian liquor, and panela (unrefined raw sugar from sugarcane) instead of simple syrup.
They have a big selection of sweets, with tres leches and cinco leches cakes, passion fruit mousse, and rice pudding; plus an in-house bakery turning out Latin cakes and treats such as milhoja, a layered puff pastry, and two kinds of cheese bread: Almojábana as well as its gluten-free sibling, pandebono, made from cassava and corn meal.
“We love traditional recipes but we like to innovate and give them our own touch to expand our culture so other people can try them and familiarize themselves with our cuisine. We only serve fresh, quality dishes with few but good ingredients," Kelly says.
The restaurant is named after the South America native fruit referred to as banana passion fruit, and Kelly incorporates the fruit in menu items such as their salad dressing, tiramisu, and their Cosmopolitan.
To give the former doughnut shop some authentic flavor, they've added a map of Colombia, woven baskets, and yellow butterflies as decoration — a nod to Colombian writer García Marquez and his book One Hundred Years of Solitude, where the colorful insects symbolize love and destiny.
“We found this area to be a good central spot for the Colombian community and beyond, since it’s multicultural and we host people that come from Dallas, Plano, McKinney and even Melissa and Anna”, Leo says.
