On Calle 42 in Bella Vista, not far from Avenida Balboa and the landmark BBVA Bank, you will find Bolero, an outpost of Cuban culture in the form of a little restaurant. A friend and I went there for lunch the other day.

Now it might be argued that by our choice of the non-smoking area we deviated from the Cuban cultural experience from the start. But though we didn't do cigars or rum, nor were the relative merits of Fidel and the Cuban American National Foundation on our minds, well before the food came we took the plunge into cultura cubana. The well cleaned, tastefully decorated and subtly lit premises are a showcase of Cuban artistic sensibilities. The music, apparently overseen by one of the minority of Panama City restaurant managers who knows how to use the volume control, is well chosen and typically Cuban. You can't ask for better atmospherics than Bolero has.

The service was prompt, friendly, bilingual and flawless. The menu, which we perused over the ample breadsticks, fresh little loaves and butter they brought out, sported moderate prices, with just a few entrees running more than $10.

I chose the chicken in mango sauce, which came with the inevitable rice and black beans --- this is, after all, Cuban-style --- and a little salad and garnish in a careful but subdued presentation. The food was great.

That afternoon Bolero attracted a slightly upscale clientele, many of them in business suits. It seems that, in addition to a following within Panama's more numerous than generally known Cuban community, a lot of professionals who work at the nearby banks, hospitals and diplomatic missions are attracted. The business lunch that's stretches out over strong Cuban coffee is part of the scene here.

You pay a modest sum for it, but Bolero has an adjacent fenced parking area with someone watching over it and that's a better option than trying to park for free on a nearby street. Yes, there was the ultra-SUV emphasizing the snob statement by taking two spaces, but there was plenty of room for the rest of the decidedly middle-class selection of vehicles.

Panama aspires to be the Crossroads of the World. Though we have a good selection of restaurants, our culinary culture doesn't yet fully meet the global implications of such a goal. We are, however, in every sense the crossroads of the Spanish-speaking world when it comes to the restaurant choices. Whether it's upscale or downscale, from Spain's regions or anywhere in Latin America, you will find the cuisine represented here. Being on the old Spanish trade routes that stopped in the Greater Antilles before crossing the isthmus en route to Latin America's Pacific coast and the Philippines, a Cuban community was already well established here by the time, a little more than 150 years ago, that the American, West Indian and Chinese communities more or less simultaneously established themselves on the isthmus.

From all of this you would expect to find Cuban food in Panama City, and you do, at several places. Bolero ably represents the genre with understated excellence.

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