¡Olé, Colombiano!

I have often kicked myself for not studying Spanish in school when I had the opportunity. In high school, I recklessly chose Latin as my foreign language because I thought it would come in handy for my later life as a professional writer. Maybe it did, but I often looked back ruefully on that decision during the years when, instead of writing, I was schlepping plates in second-class restaurants: sic itur ad astra?

Over the years, I have linguistically stumbled my way through restaurants in Paris, Rome, Florence, Copenhagen and Olathe (where a freckled waiter once asked me if I wanted some "grated parmy-zan" over my "la-zagg-neya" —I had no idea what he was talking about), but I felt somewhat more confident at the charming new Rincon Colombiano Restaurante. Still, a bit of conversational Spanish would have come in handy on my first visit to the place.

At Rincon Colombiano, the menu is in Inglés, but I felt a frustrating failure to communicate with the handsome waiter Aldemar. The Colombian-born Aldemar has been in Kansas for less than a year, and his command of English is better than my rudimentary grasp of Spanish. Still, there were unexpected glitches along the way. Most were pretty comical, and nearly all involved Aldemar saying no when he meant yes — I have the reverse problem, but that's another story — or saying no when he just didn't understand the question.

Before I even set foot in the tiny restaurant, I called ahead to make sure that the place accepted credit cards. The answer was perfectly lucid: No. So I paid for that night's meal with cash. It was only on my second visit that I spied an electronic credit-card machine mounted on a wall near the kitchen, where the restaurant's chef and owner, Juan Carlos Lambrana, was a one-man show.

"You take credit cards now, yes?" I asked. Aldemar shook his head. Another customer explained it for me: "What he means is, this place doesn't take Discover or American Express."

Ah, everything is illuminated! What I mean is, my experience with Colombian food is, as they might say in Bogota, pequeñito — smaller even than my knowledge of Colombia, which is limited to the occasional news report about terrorism, cocaine and those wild and crazy guys in the old Medellin cartel. But Rincon Colombiano (rincón translates as corner) is a good place for a crash course in Colombian culture, not only through the cuisine but also via the television set perched atop the big stainless-steel refrigerator in the dining room. It's set to either Latin American news programs — with exceptionally attractive reporters and news anchors — or Spanish soap operas, with exceptionally attractive actors who are either yelling or crying.

On my first visit to the storefront café, I was joined by my friends Bob and Carol Ann. We took a table (there are only 11 in the place) near the TV so Bob could watch the soap opera while we ate. "I don't understand a word they're saying," he said. "But I want to see why this actor can't stop weeping."

Carol Ann is bored by soap operas, so she never looked up from the menu, which was far more fascinating to her. "Lots of meat," she noted. "Plantains, soups and chicken breats."

Breasts, I corrected her. "Well it says breats on the menu," she snapped. And so it did. The menu also lists the five different soups offered every day, including that night's intriguingly named "meet balls soup." We didn't meet it or eat it, alas, because when I asked Aldemar about the sopa del día, he just shook his head. What he meant was ... oh, never mind.

I ordered churrasco, described as "shread steak — neither sliced nor shredded here — better known in South America as Brazilian-style barbecue (where restaurants called churrascaria de rodízio send waiters dashing from table to table with skewers of grilled meats, slicing off portions for customers). Rincon Colombiano's version is a thin slice of perfectly grilled beef served sizzling on a metal platter, accompanied by a little mound of white rice; two golden, fried plantains; and a tiny "salad" of shredded lettuce, two cucumber slices, a few bits of white onion and tomato slices.

The best thing about the dish was the dollop of chimichurri that came with it, a delectable sauce of olive oil, herbs, garlic and lemon, which I slathered all over the meat. It didn't pack the punch of the peppery aji pique, the spicy, vinegary sauce offered in plastic jam jars on every table in the joint. A splash of chimichurri takes a fried plantain to a whole new dimension.

Carol Ann went for the chicken breats, er, breasts, of course, especially after Aldemar told her that the dish, pechuga a la criolla, was one of the house specialties. It's a truly excellent dish, the chicken plump and fork-tender and served afloat a pud-dle of tomato-based criolla sauce. Bob didn't see eggs on the description of the bisteca a caballo, but the so-called beef "filet" (that might be an overstatement; it looked like flank steak) was topped with two fried huevos and drenched in a slightly oily tomato sauce. He liked the eggs better than the beef.