Entering the main dining room of Selva, the Colombian eatery located on a nondescript section of Anaheim Street, a busy thoroughfare in East Long Beach, feels as if you're entering a mad scientist's laboratory — if the said mad scientist was born in Cali, Colombia, and grew up in one of the most culturally diverse beach communities in California in the 90s, watching The Simpsons and listening to early Metallica.
Chef Carlos Jurado opened Selva two years ago, with partner Geoff Rau and has continued to amaze diners with his unique interpretations of his homeland's cuisine. (Traditionally, Colombian cuisine is known for its arepas and plantains, but it's much more, combining Spanish, Indigenous, and African influences.)
While there are plenty of other Colombian restaurants in Los Angeles, no one else in SoCal is doing Colombian food like Jurado, with his fine dining training and his funky, whimsical streak, making it very much worth the slog down the 710 Freeway to Long Beach to see for yourself what's he cooking up.
Selva, which means jungle or rainforest in Spanish, is a nod to the dense jungle surrounding the city of Jurado's birth.
Before opening the restaurant, he worked with various restaurant industry titans, including Sean Brock, Thomas Keller, Jordan Kahn, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken.
He's gathered his knowledge from that pedagogy, which he fully displays at Selva, as a kind of Willy Wonka of Colombian cooking.
An excellent example I discovered during a recent visit was the arroz chaufa, a fried rice served that day with smoked duck breast (the protein of the day) and, upon request for those in the know, Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
I don't like to have closed boundaries in terms of food.
You read that correctly: smoked duck, fried rice, and Flamin' Hot Cheetos. What might sound like an odd pairing drove yours truly to house the entire plate on my own, with zero regrets.
"I don't like to have closed boundaries in terms of food," Jurado told me when I asked how the concept of fusion plays into his cooking style. He hates the word (I do, too, for the record), but understands my shorthand reference to the importance of mixing cultures.
This is especially true when cooking dishes from Colombia and Peru, whose cuisine is already rooted in various influences, such as Japanese and Italian culture. "It's just a cool little whirlwind of different stuff you get to play with," Jurado said.
The Flamin' Hot inclusion came to Jurado one day while watching the film Flamin' Hot while stoned.
It spurred a couple of memories for him, back to when he was first taken by the texture the Cheetos took on when introduced to liquid.
One was when he was a student at Wilson High School in Long Beach — just down the street from Selva — when he'd spend his lunch period dining on Flamin' Hot Cheetos doused with nacho cheese and lime.
Another memory is more bittersweet: Those teen years would lead to addiction and a jail stint, during which he and cell mates would make "spread," meals made out of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and instant ramen purchased at the commissary.
His love of junk food also shows up on the brunch menu at Selva with his take on a beloved Colombian street food item, the Colombian Hot Dog.
Jurado's version features a grilled chorizo sausage topped with sweet charred onions and peppers. The hot dog is showered with a handful of cotija, followed by a drizzling of aji mayo and sweet chili jam, and then topped off with a helping of crushed Lays potato chips.
The dish showcases his ability to take something familiar and elevate it to new heights, taking his diners down a jungle-like path to a series of divine flavors.
The Smoked Pollo is one example that Jurado and his team constantly tinker with in his kitchen laboratory. While Jurado could efficiently serve a simple barbecue chicken grilled Colombian style, he instead opts to get lost in the sauce, creating something truly exceptional.
It starts with a 24-hour wet brine, followed by a three-hour smoke session before it kisses the grill, allowing the outside of the bird to slightly char. The meticulous attention to the dish exemplifies how tirelessly devoted Juardo remains to his craft.
The dish itself is a culmination of many milestones for Jurado.
One is grilling with his stepdad on the weekends; another is attending family get-togethers with family members with roots in New Orleans and Mississippi, to the proper down-home cooking education he received when working for Chef Brock in Nashville.
At Selva, "patron con hogan" is served, smothered in twice-fried -smashed green plantains and a creole sauce made with tomato, onions, cumin, and saffron.
The smoky meat, the crispy skin, the plantain's starchiness, and the sauce's bright flavors transport you to another place.
Speaking of beauty, Jurado has plenty of dishes on the menu that are particularly easy on the eyes. Take, for example, his Peruvian scallop crudo, served on a half-shell swimming in pools of psychedelic colors of greens, oranges from fermented rocoto, aji amarillo, allium oil, and aji juice, resembling a liquid light show. The rush of fresh, briny flavors mixed with sweet spice and topped with a dash of worm salt makes for one sensual bite.
Jurado says the dish that most represents him on the brunch menu (although it can be requested for dinner) is the "bandeja paisa," considered the national dish of Colombia. His take features a dry-aged flat iron steak grilled, a smoked pork belly chicharon, fried egg, rice, beans, arepa, plantains, and avocado.
"It won't be like my grandma or mom did," he said. "It's definitely like my version, my perspective of all my techniques and flavors, and I'm trying to meld that together and still feel a little traditional."
The melding of creative techniques and style that Juardo brings to the menu at Selva makes it unique. Those flourishes of creativity are like watching a painter apply different layers of paint to create an entirely new hue. In Jurado’s case, it's chicharron splashed with lime juice and dusted in his own blend of spices, giving way to some delicious results.
