The Cape is slowly coming to life this soggy spring, and some restaurants are still weeknights. But when we arrive at the front door of Ay! Caramba Cafe & Cantina, the small Mexican restaurant in the center of Harwich, The Place is humming. There's a short line and a 20-minute wait for an indoor table.
The Cafe, which opened in 2000, is an antidote to cloudy days. The small dining rooms are painted the color of the sun; a hallway is avocado green; ladderback chairs are cotton-candy pink and blue. The walls are covered with playful reminders of Mexico: sequined sombreros, mirrors, a giant replica of a tropical frog.
Still, we decide to be brave on this cool spring night and settle for one of the outdoor tables beside the town's Main Street. It's a lovely spot, fragranced by nearby blooming trees. With the white First Congregational Church across the street, it feels like we're sitting on a town green in Vermont.
One of the owners, Ira Mendoza, was raised in Los Angeles by a Mexican-born woman whose black-and-white photo graces the menus. The late Virginia Barrera was a ranchera singer who also made movies and performed in Mexico and Cuba. "The restaurant's a tribute to her," Mendoza says. Along with other Mexican music, Barrera's songs play over the sound system.
At Ay! Caramba, every meal starts with a basket of homemade tortilla chips and two salsas: one traditional red tomato, and an addictive, spicier tomatillo salsa. I am eager to taste the most unusual appetizer on the menu: nopales ($6.95), roasted paddle cactus in a lime dressing. But our waitress informs us that cacti are no-shows tonight. On this and a second visit, we learned the downside of a small cafe: not every dish is always available.
Instead we order an appetizer that turns out to be one of our favorite dishes: a seafood quesadilla ($8.25) with large chunks of crab and shrimp, sandwiched by a crisp tortilla. The ceviche ($11.95), shrimp cured with lime juice, is also tasty and, like many of the dishes, has a nice touch of cilantro.
The entree of flautas ($9.95), two tortillas stuffed with chicken, deep-fried and drizzled with avocado sauce, are wonderful with all three elements puller together; but much of the flautas are devoid of avocado sauce, leaving only chicken and tortilla, a bit bland.