Dona Lola transports
visitors to a savory world

LATIN FLAVOR

BY ANNABEL COHEN I PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANGIE BAAN

F

or Dona Lola Desuttles, owning a restaurant with her name
on the marquee is a dream come true. The youngest of eight
children from Esmeraldas, Ecuador, she always cooked for the
whole family. For most of the 30 years she's been in the U.S.,
she has cooked more out of love than for money.
When Dona Lola bought a burned-out building for $11,000 on
Springwells in Detroit, she was on her way to owning a restaurant that
served the food she ate and prepared in her native country. She con-
verted the first floor into a restaurant and the upstairs into a home for
her family. And for the past four years, this has been her life.
You can't help but like Dona Lola and her appealing little eatery,
with its modest, but cheerful decor and South American music playing
from a boom box. And you can't help admiring her adventurous spirit.
Dona Lola has a big smile and a big laugh and she's generous with
both. At any given time, you can hear the ladies in the kitchen laugh-
ing and conversing in Spanish. In a thick Ecuadorian accent, she'll call
guests darling and sweetheart as she makes her rounds through the res-
taurant to make sure her visitors like what they've ordered.
On a warm fall evening, as my dining companions and I walked into
Dona Lola's, we passed a large, open grill laden with sizzling chicken.
The intoxicating aroma made me feel as if I were somewhere else — on
vacation in the tropics, perhaps, where I had stumbled upon a surpris-
ingly charming hole in the wall.
Our waitress, Dona Lola's 15-year-old daughter, took our drink
orders. The restaurant doesn't have a liquor license, so I settled on
mango juice; but it was hard to choose from the assortment of tropical
choices.
The extensive menu offers dishes from Ecuador as well favorites
from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. When you hail from a

8 • NOVEMBER 2006 • JNPLATINUM

Pacific Ecuadorian coastal city known
for its rain forests, tropical vegetation
and abundant sea creatures, you cook
what you know best — seafood. Her
most popular dishes are red snapper
and seafood rice, Dona Lola's version of
paella.
We quickly gobbled up the tortilla
chips and three spicy salsas waiting on
our table for us before ordering several
appetizers, including various flavors of
empanadas (fried turnovers), plantain
patties and ceviche, a gazpacho-like soup.
Though the empanadas were a little too Top: Filete al Mojo de Ajo (red snapper sauteed in spicy garlic sauce) is
heavy and oily, the plantain patty and
served with rice and beans at Dona Lola (above).
ceviche were quite good.
Dona Lola
For dinner, because seafood is the house specialty, we skipped that
1312
Springwells
sizzling chicken on the grill and ordered two types of wachinango (snap-
Detroit
per) served whole (with head, tail and bones), one with red sauce and
(313) 843-4129
one with garlic. Both were deep fried, scorching hot and quite tasty, as
was an entree of thinly sliced beef, pan-fried and smothered with fried
Hours:
onions. But worth the whole trip along was the large side of creamy
Closed Mondays
vegetarian whole pinto beans (gandules) served with golden saffron rice
Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
— some of Dona Lola's regular customers come in just to get their daily
Friday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.
fix of her rice and beans.
In fact, many of her customers are regulars and friends of regulars.
Price Range:
Entrees: S8-$15
With no advertising in her budget, her business comes by word of
mouth. But she's got no worries there. As she says, "When you cook
with love, everything comes out good."
Continued on page 10

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