The Find: Review of Cuban restaurant Casa Don Rolando in North Hills - latimes.com

The Find: Casa Don Rolando — Cuban the way it’s made back home

The North Hills restaurant turns out flawless dishes in an old hacienda setting.

Casa Don Rolando sits on secluded Parthenia Place, a one-block street that curves between a row of tawdry gentleman's lounges and rundown taquerias on Sepulveda Boulevard and a vast, gaudily lit stretch of auto dealerships and tire retread shops in North Hills.

But step inside the restaurant's set piece of a dining room and you might feel a bit like Alice having traveled down the rabbit hole to Wonderland — or in this case into a fantasy of a magnificent old Cuban hacienda whose grandeur has been softened by years of patina.

Wrought-iron chandeliers hung with a few topaz-colored crystals emit a gentle shimmer above the heavy walnut-hued tables and carved wooden armoires that seem hand-burnished by time. A straw-thatched awning and simply framed vintage photos of beautiful Cuban women with gardenias in t