Peruvian restaurant and catering venue La Candela opens in Huntington Station
Causa a la limeña, chicken salad layered between mashed potatoes, is one of the cold starters at La Candela in Huntington Station. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
With the opening of La Candela in Huntington Station, Elvin and Elizabeth Paulino are betting the house on Peruvian cuisine. The couple already operates the original La Candela in Hicksville (2008) and La Candela 2 (2012) in West Hempstead but, at 7,200 square feet, the new restaurant is more than twice the size of those two combined.
What are they going to do with all that space? Catering. Elvin noted that while Long Island teems with Latin American restaurants, he couldn’t think of one event venue that specialized in Latino cooking.
The restaurant is conveniently divided into three distinct zones: There's a casual dining room with a bar that can usually handle a weeknight crowd. On Wednesdays through Saturdays, it hosts live music performances, but diners seeking a quieter meal can be seated in another, more formal dining room. Then there’s a huge third room that is only used for parties. Any and all spaces can be used for catering so that, all told, La Candela can handle parties from 10 to 200 guests.
The lunch and dinner menus will be familiar to any fan of Peruvian cuisine and follows the outlines of the Paulinos’ other two restaurants, though the presentations, Elvin said, "are more upscale." You’ll find ceviche and its soupier cousin, tiradito, jalea (mixed fried seafood), chupe (shrimp chowder), anticuchos (grilled veal heart), papas a la Huancaina (potatoes napped in creamy pepper sauce), lomo saltado (stir-fried steak), grilled or fried chicken and chaufa, the fried rice brought to Peru by Chinese immigrants.
There are also five varieties of causa — a cold dish composed of layers of seasoned mashed potatoes alternating with chicken salad, tuna salad or seafood.
The East Jericho Turnpike venue has a storied Long Island history. From 1983 to 2010, it was Panama Hatties, whose first chef was Tom Schaudel and last chef was Matt Hisiger, now chef-owner of LB Social in Long Beach. After a brief stint as Amicale (2011 to 2012), it emerged, in 2014, as the grand Italian Cinque Terre, which closed last year.
La Candela is at 872 E. Jericho Tpke, Huntington Station, 631-470-7371, lacandelahuntington.com.
