NEW YORK (NYTimes) February 16, 2005 — Something about the name just didn't sit right. Good Cuban food at a restaurant named after a cocktail co-opted by every watermelon-martini-slinging bar in Manhattan?

Months after friends had tipped me off to the restaurant, which opened in Brooklyn last February, I finally went. And a couple of bites into the appetizers, I made a mental note: restaurant names are like book covers (easier to judge by than to divine information from).

Maria Arias, the owner, is originally from Cuba, though her family now lives in Colombia, where she met and married her husband, Marcello. He worked as a chef in Colombia and now does the same at Mojito, which is tucked into the first floor of a renovated building that was once a chocolate factory.

Mrs. Arias says the restaurant's recipes are primarily adaptations of her mother's. (Her mother visited to see how they were faring when the restaurant opened and was shocked to see that her daughter had eliminated the sweet plantains from her ropa vieja. "You know how your mother always cooked something you didn't like?" Mrs. Arias asked. "I had to break it to her that I never liked the sweet plantains in it.")

For all the dishes that hark back to the old country - like mazorca asada, grilled corn with mayonnaise and cheese ($3), and the restaurant's four kinds of large, flaky empanadas ($2) - there are also newer additions to the family repertory.

One is the addictive creamy "secret sauce," which arrives at the table along with buttery toast and garlicky mojo as soon as you sit down. It's a secret only until you ask Mrs. Arias what's in it. "Mayo, olives, jalapeños and beer," she said. "We wanted to thin it out, but water diluted the flavor too much, so we started using beer." It sounds more like a bachelor's shopping list than a chef's creation, but we didn't make a single visit without asking for second or third helpings.

Another seemingly newfangled dish is the Mojito churrasco salad ($12), a huge platter of cubed mango, avocado and firm white cheese blanketed with lettuce, deeply charred boneless chicken thighs and fried onions. It's like the Cuban love child of a grilled chicken Caesar and a blooming onion. I mean that in the best possible way.

The salad (along with almost everything else) was portioned in such a fashion that to follow it with a main course and a dessert would constitute some form of human gavage. This isn't criticism but advice: share. The tostones rellenos ($9) - four green plantain cups, two filled with towering mounds of pernil (slow-roasted pork shoulder), two overflowing with ropa vieja made from skirt steak instead of the more traditional flank - are large enough for four people and are a great way to taste both of the meats without having to commit to entree-size portions of each.

The lone vegetarian option on the menu is more than worthwhile, too. Moros y Cristianos ($8) is so often just another plate of black beans and white rice on the table, but at Mojito Mr. Arias cooks beans halfway, purées some of them into the cooking water, adds the rice to the pot and finishes the dish in the oven. The dish is resoundingly full-flavored; the rice is infused with the beans' earthy, almost smoky flavor.

And in a city where four ounces of gin that's had vermouth suggested to it will cost you $12, Mojito's $7 half-quart namesake drinks are a welcome change of pace. Mrs. Arias said the passion fruit variation was the most popular, but I curmudgeonly stuck to the original formula, which, even if it's not as expertly mixed as one that costs twice as much across the river, is both ample and boozy enough to satisfy.

At Mojito new dishes mix amiably with Cuban classics, fruity drinks haven't pushed a selection of fine rums off the menu, and Cuban kitsch doesn't overwhelm the Brooklynness of the place. The concoction is well balanced, like a good cocktail. Maybe they had the name right all along.

Mojito

275 Park Avenue (Washington Avenue), Clinton Hill, Brooklyn; (718) 797-3100.

BEST DISHES Tostones rellenos; pernil; moros y Cristianos; Cuban sandwich.

PRICE RANGE Soups, salads and appetizers, $2 to $12; main courses, $9 to $15; sandwiches, $6.

CREDIT CARDS All major.

HOURS Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to midnight; Friday and Saturday, 1 p.m. to 1 a.m.; Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.