They don’t have a liquor license at Mojitos in downtown San Fernando. So, depending on how doctrinaire you are about your cocktails, the wine-based mojitos they make (classic, mango, strawberry, coco-pineapple and passion fruit) are either a clever workaround … or a mildly alcoholic fruit drink.

But then, since the mojito has always been a rum-based fruit drink, made with sugar cane juice, lime juice, sparkling water and mint, making it with wine is no less legitimate than non-alcoholic beer. And anyway, I’ve read that one of the most popular mojitos in Havana these days is made using a rose-flavored spirit. In Mexico, mojitos are made using tequila.

In Peru, they flavor mojitos with grapefruit, passionfruit, pears, raspberries, orange and strawberries. I’ve seen mojitos made with gin and tonic water. One legend is that the mojito was created by Sir Francis Drake, who used brandy. Hemingway drank a lot of them when in Havana. It was recently named the most popular cocktail in both Great Britain and France.

As far as I’m concerned, as long as it tastes good, it’s a fine enough beverage to quaff seated on the patio of the San Fernando Library. Which is where Mojitos the restaurant nestles, hidden from the traffic on Maclay Street, in a peaceful enclave, adjacent to a barbecue shop, across from a Mexican restaurant.

I wasn’t here for the mojitos. I was here for the pollo asado, a richly marinated chicken dish I never grow tired of. The version at Mojitos doesn’t have as much garlic as the famous one at Versailles. But the meat — so sweet! — falls from the bone. It made a mess of my fingers and my shirt. I had no complaints.

It’s both crispy and tender at the same time, doused with lots of sliced onions and sauce, served with surprisingly tasty white rice, black beans that have been cooked down to their essential elements, and plantains that are half starch and half dessert.

But really, it all comes down to the chicken and the sauce. And yet, the need to taste more is hard to resist. Dangling in the air is the notion that maybe, just maybe, there’s a dish on the menu that’s even better. And so, I brought along a good eater — a heavy fork — to help out.

We were there for the weekday lunch, when they offered dinner dishes at nicely discounted prices. We began with an order of the beef empanadas, which were as crispy as french fries, reminding me that the Cuban culinary mantra seems to be when in doubt deep-fry.

Crunchy is everywhere — and especially in the thinly sliced plantain chips called mariquitas, and in the chunky pork dish called masitas de puerco, “marinated in our house garlic sauce.”

Though it’s not a lunch special, we also knocked back a Sandwich Cubano, which isn’t so much a sandwich as a pastry packed with a crazy number of ingredients, dominated by pork, pickles and cheese, served on crusty bread that reminds you of just how good bread can be (and how much of a debt we owe to the Earl of Sandwich and his card playing).

I don’t understand how they stay so trim in Havana; it’s all the dancing, I assume.

We had ropa vieja — which translates as “old clothes” — and is a dish of shredded, braised beef so tender that the slogan found at a local barbecue house said, “You don’t need no teeth to eat our beef.” And that applies here perfectly.

The pork — Mofongos reminds me of just how good the Cuban treatment of pork really is — includes lechon asado (roasted pork marinated in garlic mojo sauce), and the aforementioned macitas de puerco fritas that somehow manage to be both tender and crispy at the same time.

There’s also a section of the menu dedicated to the definitive Puerto Rican dish called mofongo — a mash of green plantains and pork rinds, circling a doughnut-sized hole filled with pork, chicken, beef and seafood (pretty much anything and everything). It’s a culinary object of desire for Puerto Ricans. It’s the sort of dish that has me promising myself I’ll live on salad the day after to offset the damage.

At Mojitos, the ring is filled with a choice of shrimp, ropa vieja, lechon pork and rabo, which translates as oxtail. (There’s actually a restaurant in North Hollywood called Mofongos, where the options also run to both chicken stew and fried chicken, beef stew, steak and onions, pork roast, shredded pork, fried pork, shrimp, lobster and more. You can add avocado, too, which seems to be almost a healthy touch.)

For dessert, there’s the three-milk cake called Tres Leches, and of course a very good flan — based, like the mojito, on sugar.

Someday, I hope to go to Havana, and have a mojito in Hemingway’s favorite bar, La Bodeguita del Medio. It’s on my bucket list, which just keeps getting longer. But then, unlike my desire to one day visit the remains of the Titanic, it’s at least rational. As long as I don’t have too many.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email [email protected].

Mojitos

• Rating: 2 stars
• Address: 233 N. Maclay Ave., San Fernando
• Information: 818-639-0339; www.mojitossanfernando.com
• Cuisine: Cuban
• When: Lunch and dinner, Monday through Saturday
• Details: Beer and wine; reservations not needed
• Atmosphere: An all-outdoor café, in the very pleasant library plaza, offering a taste of Havana with especially good, crispy empanadas, along with live music on weekends.
• Prices: About $25 per person
• On the menu: 6 Appetizers ($7.50-$23), 7 Beef Dishes ($17.50-$25), 2 Pork Dishes ($17.50), 4 Mofongo Dishes ($21-$25), 4 Chicken Dishes ($17.50-$22), 5 Seafood Dishes ($17.50-$23), 5 Sandwiches/Burgers ($12.50-$13.50), 10 Lunch Specials ($13.75-$15.50), 5 Sides ($3.50-$5.50)
• Credit cards: MC, V
• What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal. Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.