Paul Brownfield can easily find a medianoche at Porto's on Brand, right in downtown Glendale ("Chewed Up, Spit Out," July 31). Avoid going on Friday afternoon, which is when hordes of people throng the place to pick up their baked goods for the weekend. The medianoche might not be as stellar as, say, the first one I ate in Tampa long ago (a serious Cuban colony from way back), but it's good enough, and cheap.
I'm sure there's great food in Manhattan's grand halls of haute cuisine -- ethnic specialties so authentic as to make a transplant cry for her homeland -- but I've never had a really great meal there. I was never hungry so much as exhausted.
