Postcard from Rincon, Puerto Rico: Pig on a Spit, Ocean Vu

        Two frustrated vacationers in paradise (food mediocre and expensive everywhere), the sign stops us: El Fogon de la Curva, a pig on a spit - “cooked over flame at the turn of the road.” Six bare wooden tables, sweeping view of the ocean from the hillside perch. “Do you really have pig?”  Owner pulls me into kitchen. There it is, big as a loveseat, gleaming in its deep golden crackle. I pinch a piece of skin and swoon. Back that night for dinner, the porker juicy, meaty and tender in its potato chip-crisp skin, $7.99 with two sides, tostones and buttered steamed yucca with a crunch of raw onions for me, pigeon pea-studded rice and sweet plaintains for hubby. We’ve found our vacation local.

        How did Bay Ridge, Brooklyn-born Tommy Dragonetti come to be running a roadside lechonera in Rincon, PR?

        Seems that on September 11, 2001, as on every other weekday morning, Dragonetti dropped wife Nancy at the bus stop near their house in Staten Island. She was late and missed her usual bus. As she scurried across the lobby of the South Tower, late for her job in the World Financial Center, she found chaos. She ran out and scrambled over a fence to the Hudson River where a rescue boat picked her up.  It was six hours before she finally reached Tommy, who assumed she was dead. Reunited that night with their year-old daughter, Nicole, she asked: “Can we leave please?”  They moved to her homeland, Puerto Rico.  Now Dragonetti fires up pigs on Carr 115 km 7.1, Añasco. Tel: 787 826 0096. Open 10:30 am to 11 pm (closed Tuesdays).  Everyone on the bus Nancy missed died.  

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