Home-Away-From-Home Cooking

When it comes to Lionel "Yon-Yon" Simeon's Haitian home cooking, "home" is definitely the operative word.

It's not just that his Hyattsville cafe, Chez Yon-Yon, is a tidy little converted house painted bright as a parrot inside and out, with casual family-style seating in the waiting room (what used to be called a Florida room) and a covered patio. Or that it really is a mom-and-pop operation (Simeon's wife, Yannick, has evolved into the chief pot-watcher).

It's that Chez Yon-Yon is an unofficial community center for Haitian immigrants, catering weddings and First Communions, selling Haitian CDs and tickets to community events, and hooking up customers with business leads, family news and neighborhood gossip. When the restaurant was selected to cater Haitian food for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2004, it pretty much sealed the deal: Yon-Yon had the island exiles' bam! crown in hand.

Which was funny only because Simeon didn't start out to run a restaurant at all: He's a musician, a trumpet player in the long-lived Haitian konpa band DP Express. (He and several other band members, touring the United States in the mid-'80s when civil violence broke out, never went home.) He would cook for the band after shows, making what he liked, and he continued preparing meals for homesick friends after the group dissolved. But it is as much his outgoing personality as the food that makes Chez Yon-Yon fun. It's not haute, just homey.

There is not a huge menu; it's one of those places where several ingredients are prepared any of several basic ways. But it's not quite as straightforward as it looks. The term "fried," which is applied to many of the dishes, can mean one of two techniques. Plantains (palm-size slabs, not fingers), the grated taro balls and the flour fritters (like creole hush puppies, only softer) are deep-fried, but the pork and goat are pan-broiled so hot that the outer surface of the chunks goes crackling crisp, not country-fried, and very little of the oil sticks to the meat.

This is not highly seasoned food, at least not as it comes out: You have to pile on the mojo sauce -- something like a cross between garlic slaw and fresh kimchi -- and suddenly the fried plantains come to life.

Much of the fun has to do with texture. Those crispy bits of goat are like poppers. Oxtail is prime for those who can't resist that gelatinous texture and the fun of sucking bones (but no one ever said tendons were tangy), and there's a sort of comfort stew, one of those refrigerator-lottery dishes flavored with the bits and orts of other dishes, that turns eggplant into the "pasta" for dabs of crab, oxtail and chicken, among other things. Fried fish is either pan-sauteed or lightly fried with a dollop of tomato for a rather simple dish, and the fried chicken can be dry.

On the other hand, the seafood creoles, variously made with shrimp, conch and lobster, are quite delicate, turned in a simple saute of sweet peppers and onions and slightly sweet tomato sauce and unexpectedly dotted with a dice of broccoli, green beans and cauliflower. Sauteed chicken is more tender, and no one who grew up in the South can resist stewed chicken.

It is a lot of food for the money. The presence on certain nights of lobster creole or the lobster-and-shrimp combo skews the prices high (it's a market variable, like the conch), but most of the dinners are less than $15, and that counts a fairly large green salad, the plantains and double-size bowls of red beans and rice or pinto beans and rice, your choice.

In fact, you'll be lucky to get much past the appetizers, especially since some are like small plates of the entrees, and if you order a first round of the plantains, you're almost certain to wallow.

Chez Yon-Yon doesn't serve alcohol. There is homemade lemonade, anise-flavored iced tea and "champagne cola" (like cream soda). Also consider that some of the more expensive dishes, such as the lobster creole, are more likely to be available on weekend nights. If you have a particular craving, call ahead.

In addition to the parking out front, there are a few spaces behind the restaurant. Turn onto Riggs Road and swing into the alley.

Chez Yon-Yon 834 Chillum Rd., Hyattsville Phone: 301-853-0404 Kitchen hours: Open Tuesday-Friday and Sundays noon-9, Saturdays noon-11. Prices: Appetizers $1.99-$5.99; entrees $8.99-$28.99. Wheelchair access: Not wheelchair accessible.