Mayo Ketchup team builds some of St. Louis' best hot dogs, bowls at Salsa Rosada

A steak pepito at Salsa Rosada

A Colombian hot dog at Salsa Rosada

A steak pepito at Salsa Rosada

A grilled arepa at Salsa Rosada

Jona Tarifa (center) and her spouse, Moses Tarifa (right) dine with their family July 28, 2023, at Salsa Rosada.

Salsa Rosada at 3135 Olive Street

At Mayo Ketchup in Lafayette Square, chef and owner Mandy Estrella has solved the equation that has confounded many other independent restaurateurs. There the deservedly self-proclaimed “Plantain Girl” serves the Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban cuisines she is passionate about in a convenient counter-service format without short-changing its customers or its fare. While Mayo Ketchup dedicates a significant portion of its menu to the unsexy category of bowls, its signature pernil bowl transcends its fast-casual trappings with roasted pork as luscious and flavorful as any in town.

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Unsurprisingly, Estrella and co-owner Bradley Payne have followed this successful formula at their new midtown venture, Salsa Rosada. The parallel begins with the name, another tangy, pink-hued sauce concocted from mayo and ketchup that appears across the menu and in a squeeze bottle at your table. Likewise, the storefront on Olive Street just east of South Compton Avenue follows the counter-service format. In a nod to the dining reality of 2023, there is a separate front door for picking up online orders.

Mandy Estrella, co-owner of Salsa Rosada, behind the bar at her restaurant at 3135 Olive Street

For Salsa Rosada, Estrella has shifted her focus from the Caribbean to South America and the fare of Colombia and Venezuela, neither of which is broadly available in the region. Here, too, you can bridge these cuisines and the fast-casual environs with a bowl — say, spoon-tender pabellón criollo (Venezuelan shredded beef) with rice, beans and subtly sweet ripe plantains. This straightforward arrangement benefits from a squiggle of salsa rosada or the cilantro sauce that fills the other large squeeze bottle brought to your table. To jolt the bowl to life, add a spoonful of the spicy, verdant ají picante, which is available for a nominal additional charge.

A pabellón criollo bowl at Salsa Rosada

That ají picante could spark any dish at Salsa Rosada, though outside of the bowls, it might battle to make itself heard above other condiments. Witness the pepito, a Venezuelan-style sandwich that overspills its cushy cradle of canilla bread. The filling of steak or chicken (or both) is generous to begin with, and the sandwich is garnished with cabbage, tomato and skinny, crisp potato sticks and striped with ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise as well as cilantro sauce. Beyond these condiment pyrotechnics, though, the heart of my sandwich was tender chicken precisely browned on the grill.

Modest only by comparison are sandwiches that use patacones, twice-fried green plantains, as the “bread.” (Estrella serves similar sandwiches at Mayo Ketchup, where they are known as jibaritos.) Between two patacones, your choice of filling — pabellón criollo, pernil, chicken or vegetarian avocado — anchors a snappy, creamy assemblage of cabbage, garlic mayo, cilantro sauce, and both queso blanco and cotija cheese.

A patacone, a sandwich with twice-fried green plantains, at Salsa Rosada

The patacones are savory rather than sweet and lightly seasoned. The texture isn’t chewy, exactly, but it retains a pleasant stickiness that keeps it from being soft. In my patacon with pernil, the texture helped draw out the roasted pork’s natural juices against the sandwich’s numerous accents.

(A vegan patacon with jackfruit and cheese and mayonnaise substitutes is also available. In smart, contemporary fashion, vegan options are also available for Salsa Rosada’s bowls, fried arepas and cheese empanada.)

A Colombian hot dog at Salsa Rosada

As visually striking as the pepitos and patacones are, I suspect both will place behind the perros calientos as Salsa Rosada’s most photogenic and most memorable dish. The restaurant offers two versions of its beef hot dog, a Colombian and a Venezuelan. Both look as if someone studied a typical Chicago-style dog and concluded, “Needs more pizzazz.” The Colombian perros calientes decorate the hot dog with a pineapple sauce as well as the now familiar salsa rosada and cilantro sauce, with cotija cheese and, for crunch, cabbage and potato sticks.

Those last three garnishes and the cilantro sauce also top the Venezuelan version, but here a bacon sauce amps up the hot dog’s natural meatiness, while caramelized onions and a corn sauce grace the dish with an autumnal note more savory than sweet. Both perros calientes are nestled in a soft bun — made by local Venezuelan bakery Pan Pa’Ti, as is the canilla bread — and both rank among the area’s best hot dogs.

For all the Instagram-ready charms of its hot dogs and sandwiches, Salsa Rosada also excels at such simple pleasures as a crisp, yielding empanada oozing cheese or, for a lighter snack, tequeños, thin, crackling fried pastry shells stuffed with molten cheese or cheese and guava.

Mayo Ketchup fans, this critic included, shouldn’t be surprised that Estrella, Payne and their team have built another restaurant as compelling as it is reliable and efficient, whether you’re hungry for a placid bowl or a riotous hot dog. If Salsa Rosada’s most obvious “flaw” is that it makes you impatient to further explore Colombian and Venezuelan cuisine, it also points to one obvious chef with the chops to lead us there.

Recommended • The Post-Dispatch evaluates restaurants on the following scale, lowest to highest: not recommended, recommended, highly recommended, essential. The rating reflects how the restaurant succeeds on its own terms — and how it meets a diner's good-faith expectations of quality food and hospitality — regardless of cuisine, location or cost.

Perros calientos • $10

Chicken pepito • $13

Pork patacon • $14

Pabellón criollo bowl • $15

Where Salsa Rosada, 3135 Olive Street • More info 314-601-3038; facebook.com/salsarosadastl; instagram.com/salsarosadastl • Menu Colombian and Venezuelan bowls, sandwiches and more in a fast-casual format • Hours 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday)

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