A happy homecoming for El Oriental de Cuba

In a trim navy polo shirt embroidered with the name of his restaurant, and two sets of keys and a cell phone dangling from his belt, Nobel Garcia emerges from El Oriental de Cuba, the beloved Hyde Square restaurant and gathering spot in Jamaica Plain. He's carrying a yellow box of enormous striped lollipops, and stoops to hand them out to children as he makes his way through a crowd of well-wishers that includes neighborhood residents and business people, politicians, policemen, and firefighters. Beaming through his neat white beard as he's greeted with hugs, kisses, and slaps on the back, Garcia, 60, looks like a grandfather celebrating the birth of a child. Instead, he's reopening his restaurant, which was destroyed by a firebomb in July 2005.

City officials and neighbors regard El Oriental as a community center. On the busy corner of Centre and Paul Gore streets, anchoring JP's Latin quarter, the Cuban spot has been a favorite for more than a decade for locals to catch up on neighborhood affairs and talk about politics -- Cuban or otherwise -- over cafe con leche and Cubano sandwiches. The blaze at El Oriental de Cuba was the first in a series of suspicious fires that have since destroyed a total of 14 JP businesses.

The news last July that El Oriental had been gutted by fire spread quickly, and the next morning, "scores of people were standing outside the building," says City Councilor John Tobin, whose district includes Jamaica Plain. "It's almost as if people were going to a wake." After it happened, Tobin said, "the tone was not so much defeat. There was no question that El Oriental would be rebuilt." As the months passed, the rebuilding effort went slowly, with notices for an arson hotline posted over the boarded up windows and little evidence of progress.

By spring, El Oriental was showing signs of life, and the renovation was completed this fall. Today, El Oriental is "a little bit lovelier than it was before," says Garcia, who worked with the City of Boston and the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation to rebuild. "I spent everything I had," he said. The dining room boasts framed photos and extra seats to accommodate the crowds who have gathered since the restaurant reopened last month.

Late on a weekend afternoon, waves of people are waiting for seats, sipping coffee or tropical shakes called batidos and perusing the menu. Cuban food is similar to other Central and South American foods, explains Garcia, with different seasonings, and lots of stews made from inexpensive cuts of meat like tongue and tripe. Rice and beans, along with root vegetables like yucca, are staples of the cuisine. Dishes here tend to be richer than they are in Cuba, Garcia says, where most people can't afford shrimp, steak, and chorizo.

El Oriental is known for its Cubano sandwiches -- ham, marinated roast pork, and Swiss cheese pressed between crusty bread. Guests also line up for the ropa vieja (shredded beef), goat stew, braised oxtail, and whole snapper in spicy sauce. In the dining room, half of the tables order side dishes of mofongo, a rich dish of mashed green plantains with pork rinds and garlic sauce. Other diners slide their forks into delightfully greasy papa rellena, a potato ball stuffed with beef, ordered alongside plates of fried kingfish, maduros (fried ripe plantains), and spicy octopus with rice.

With its inviting new signs and the bright, chrysanthemum-filled window boxes that wrap around the storefront, El Oriental is a stronger presence on the block than ever. "It's really unbelievable the way it came back," Garcia said.

Support for the restaurant poured out in the months after the fire. El Oriental became an institution on the strength of Garcia's role in the community, says Tobin. "In any organization, success is about the leadership," he says. "It's Nobel. If anybody ever needed anything in the neighborhood, he was there for them."

Garcia emigrated from Cuba with his parents in 1955 at age nine, and has lived in a house up the street from the restaurant since 1962. When he was growing up, his parents owned a small convenience store in Hyde Square. Garcia married at 19, raised three daughters in JP (one of whom is a Boston police officer), and divorced recently. He's been associated with El Oriental for nine years, initially leaving his job at a paper mill in Framingham to help run the restaurant with his uncle, Evaristo Cambara. Cambara sold the place to Garcia in 1999.

In 40 years, Garcia has seen many changes in Hyde Square. The neighborhood, once home to German immigrants who worked in nearby factories, was filled during Garcia's youth with Cuban immigrants who eventually moved to the suburbs or headed south to Miami. In the past 10 to 15 years, Hyde Square has shaken off a reputation as an unstable neighborhood struggling with crime and become a diverse and desirable place to live. Along with other community activists, Garcia has been part of this renaissance, says Tobin.

As Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Salvadorans have settled in Hyde Square, Garcia has welcomed them all. "It's really like the United Nations in there," says Milky Way Lounge and Lanes owner Kathie Mainzer, whose business is across the street from El Oriental. "What makes Hyde Square unique is its diversity," she says, "and at El Oriental you can see that."

There have been no arrests related to the string of arsons in JP, which is unsettling for many business owners, including Garcia. The restaurateur, who has been working 18-hour days, says the thought of another devastating fire is always in his head.

"If you live with that fear," he adds, "you might as well stay home and give up."

Which, of course, he has no intention of doing.

El Oriental de Cuba, 416 Centre St., Jamaica Plain, 617-524-6464.