Salsa Rosada Is a Home Run in Midtown

Salsa Rosada (3135 Olive Street, 314-601-3038) would likely not exist if not for Major League Baseball. At least, that's how owner Mandy Estrella explains it in between her near- daily deliveries to Busch Stadium during baseball season. It's an arrangement that's been going on for a couple of years now — ever since word spread throughout the city's Latin American community about her ability to flawlessly execute some of the region's most beloved dishes at her four-year-old Lafayette Square restaurant, Mayo Ketchup.

It turns out that local Latin American transplants were not the only ones to take notice. Estrella and her partner in life and business, Bradley Payne, observed that the occasional professional baseball player hailing from Latin America would drop in and be so impressed with her ability to bring them a taste of home that became regulars. Word got out through that close-knit community, and the next thing they knew, Mayo Ketchup was asked to cater meals for visiting teams who would come to play the Cardinals.

That arrangement not only validates Estrella's cooking; it shows how the level of catering she was doing got so big that it could no longer be confined to Mayo Ketchup's small kitchen — already pushed to the limit preparing food for the restaurant. Estrella and Payne toyed with the idea of finding a commissary to run their catering business out of, but when they came across a large commercial kitchen that happened to include a sizable restaurant space mere blocks from the new Citypark stadium, they jumped on the opportunity. Not wanting to take business away from the Puerto Rican- and Dominican-focused Mayo Ketchup in Lafayette Square or its spinoff food stall inside Citypark, they decided to build a new restaurant around a different region of Latin American cuisine that they knew diners were hungry for: Venezuelan and Colombian food. With that goal, Salsa Rosada came to life.

Though nearly a decade into her food business — first as the pop-up brand and former food counter inside Alpha Brewing Company, Plantain Girl, and eventually as the driving force behind Mayo Ketchup — Estrella still gets looks when people find out she's the owner of a fiercely traditional restaurant like Salsa Rosado. Those who have been following her know the backstory: As a St. Louis transplant living in Florida, Estrella fell in love with the Latin American food that defined south Florida's food culture and was determined to learn how to cook it for the Dominican was then married to and their children. It became apparent to everyone that ate what she prepared that she had a talent and intuitive knack for bringing these dishes to life, and she carried that with her when she and her family moved back to St. Louis.

Estrella jokes that she never intended to open a restaurant — let alone two plus a food stall in a soccer stadium — but she kept getting requests for her food from members of the area's Latin American expat community. This led to the Plantain Girl brand and a stint at Alpha Brewing that became so popular that it could no longer be contained as a mere food counter in a brewery. In 2019, Estrella and Payne finally took the leap and opened Mayo Ketchup to immediate success, enough that it was able to help them weather the pandemic. Catering orders came pouring in, then came the opportunity to be a part of the world-class local food program at Citypark and the MLB business.

And now, Salsa Rosada. Located in the former Hugo's Pizzeria in the heart of Midtown, Estrella and Payne's five-month-old restaurant makes you understand why there was such demand for more out of this pair. Despite the counter service and size (the large space, with exposed brick, bright blue walls, black tables, chairs and banquettes, is divided into two fairly sizeable rooms), Salsa Rosada makes you feel like you are in a home kitchen in Bogotá or Caracas the moment you taste the food. This is not by accident. Though Estrella has honed her craft over the years, learning as much as possible through experimentation, experience and research, many of her Colombian and Venezuelan guests eagerly provided their favorite home recipes so that she could work her magic. The result is an outstanding assortment of traditional Colombian and Venezuelan dishes that are not just delicious; they are utterly soulful.

Consider the empanadas: large marigold-hued, half-moon-shaped fritters that are the standard of the form, whether filled with succulent ground beef and potatoes, black beans or even simple white cheese, which is so rich and gooey it stretches like a fried mozzarella stick when you crack them in half. Tequeños, too, offer this decadent cheese experience. Here, flaky pastry dough is filled with the same mild white cheese and fried, then rolled up like a cigar. Alone, it's delicious, but when accented with a guava filling, it's an otherworldly sweet-and-savory experience, not unlike a less sugary rolled-up cheese Danish.

Two other handheld, stuffed pastry-like dishes are equally delicious. The cochito, a crescent-shaped bread roll filled with ham and cheese, has the same delightfully sticky-spongy texture as a bao. However, I was particularly taken with the buñuelo, a mandarin orange-sized sphere of cornmeal lightly flecked with cheese. This outrageously good fritter shares much with a hush puppy but has a wonderful, yeasty flavor that calls to mind doughnuts.

Estrella's kitchen manager says her favorite dishes are the arepas; when you taste them, you see why. The fried offering employs a similar lovely corn concoction as the empanadas, though here it is disc-shaped and cut in half. Inside, Estrella offers a variety of fillings, including mouthwatering roasted pork that tastes like the very definition of pork itself. Shredded beef is equally stunning. As tender as a bell-peppery pot roast, the meat's juices soak into the cornmeal like a Latin American take on the French dip. Both versions are accented with cabbage, queso blanco sauce, cotija cheese and a creamy cilantro sauce that adds a verdant note to the otherwise rich dish.

That shredded beef is the perfect filling for Estrella's mammoth patacone, a sandwich that employs smashed plantains as the top and bottom bases. The crispy fried tostones provide a wonderful textural counter to the tender beef, which is dressed in the same accoutrements as the arepas. This dish — which could easily feed two, maybe three, people — is one of Salsa Rosada's showstoppers. The other is the perros calientes, quite literally, hot dogs. This over-the-top dish features a beef hot dog tucked into a bun and served Venezuelan style with cabbage, caramelized onions, cilantro, bacon and corn sauces, cotija cheese and fried potato sticks. It's a joyfully messy concoction that looks overwhelming — but is a surprisingly well-balanced blend of sweet, smoke and salt, richness and crunch. The hot dog is a wonderfully beefy version I would enjoy eating even unadorned.

However wild the perros calientes are, Estrella shows she can shine just as brightly — maybe even more — when her food is at its most simple. A bowl of black beans and rice topped with rich, chile-infused jackfruit is deeply satisfying, almost evoking the sweet and savory taste of baking spice. However, it's her pernil where Estrella is at her most dazzling. The dish is nothing more than unadorned, slow-roasted pork, seasoned to bring out the meat's deep, savory flavor, but not one bit more than needed so you taste nothing but pure, porcine bliss. So juicy you could spread it on a cracker, the pork, perfectly sticky maduros, well-cooked beans and rice stand as not only a wonderful example of traditional Latin American cooking; they are a flag in the ground that distinguishes her as a definitive source for traditional Venezuelan and Colombian cuisine.

Salsa Rosada is open Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (Closed Sun. and Mon.)

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