Numero Uno was already 10 years old by the time I moved to Orlando in 1988. In fact, shortly after I arrived, the original owner, Rolando Vieitez, sold the Cuban restaurant to Isidro and Carmen Paulino. Not long after the sale, the chain restaurant Pizzeria Uno opened its first Orlando location. Right away, PU’s lawyers sent a letter to the Paulinos telling them that the Chicago-based pizza chain owned the rights to the word uno and Numero Uno would have to change its name or face litigation.
Never mind that the restaurant had been using that name for more than a decade And who can claim sole rights to an integer anyway?
Locals were outraged, and I decided to take up the cause, writing about how the big, bad chain owner was attacking a mom-and-pop business. After a couple of updates in my weekly “Chow Hound” column, I received a call at my desk at the Sentinel from the president of Pizzeria Uno, who told me he was calling from his car on his way to the airport in Chicago. And the only thing I could think at the time was, “Whoa! This dude has a phone in his car!” (It was early 1989, after all.)
Anyway, the CEO was exasperated by the whole issue about the name, and he said – I’m paraphrasing – You know, if you’d just shut up about it the whole thing will blow over. He explained that Pizzeria Uno had no intention of taking the Paulinos to court. But if the company’s lawyers hadn’t sent the cease and desist letter, they wouldn’t be able to defend future claims from others trying to use Uno in their names.
The whole thing blew over.
And Numero Uno, now owned by Nelly Gomez, continues to operate from the same compact space on South Orange Avenue.
I hadn’t been in years, so I met a couple of friends there for lunch recently. The food is as good as always, same fine quality and generous portions, and service as friendly as ever.
I selected one of the lunch specials, pernil de cerdo. The shreds of roast pork were nicely seasoned and moist, topped with grilled onions. Included were a couple of shards of skin, delicious and crackling. The dish included an ample mound of yellow rice and a toss-off salad.
One of my companions had carne asada, with tender hunks of meat, white rice with black beans and tostones.
Another friend chose arroz con pollo and specified dark meat. But the dish arrived with white meat and was a tad dry. When he mentioned to the server that he had requested dark meat, she immediately swooped away the chicken and returned with a more than generous plate of leg and thigh meat.
The restaurant is brighter than I remembered it, with colorful murals and mirrors making it look larger than it is.
By the way, the original owner, Vieitez, eventually opened another restaurant, in Casselberry, and called it Numero Dos. Perhaps realizing that on several levels it wasn’t a good idea to name a restaurant Number Two, he changed it to Rolando’s.
But Numero Uno lives on, and it will always be first in Cuban cuisine for many Central Floridians.
Numero Uno is at 2499 S. Orange Ave., Orlando (map). It is open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. The phone number is 407-841-3840.
