Managua's Home of Good Food.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Brief Article

ABOUT FIFTEEN MILES from downtown Managua, at the end of a winding mountain road flanked by both crumbling shacks and elegant mansions, sits Al di La--one of the freest gourmet restaurants in Central America.

But it's not just a restaurant. Al di La is also the not-so-private home of Maria Jose Arguello, Nicaragua's vice-minister of culture from 1994 to 1997 and a close friend of former president Violeta Chamorro.

Open to the public on Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. (and to groups of at least eight to ten people the rest of the week by reservation only), Al di La offers its patrons mouthwatering specialties such as grilled Australian lamb chops marinated with rosemary and accompanied by white beans and stuffed tomatoes, or filet of red snapper on a tower of yucca, along with avocado sauce, sprinkled with piperade tomato sauce and sweet Nicaraguan fruit known as guabas.

Arguello says she got into the restaurant business quite by accident. "In 1997, after the change in government, I found myself without work," the apron-clad former minister explains. "So my home became a club for diplomats, journalists, NGOs, and others."

Before the Sandinista revolution, Arguello was the general. manager of Casa de las Artesanias of Banco Nicaraguense, and in the early 1990s, she helped promote fine arts for the Instituto Nicaraguense de Cultura.

A native of Leon who was once married to an Italian and still has dual Nicaraguan-Italian citizenship, Arguello says that "an Italian friend suggested to me that in Rome, couples opened their homes to the public. And when I went to Cuba as vice-minister of culture, people were already allowed to open...