Hialeah is the proverbial Rodney Dangerfield of Miami-Dade cities. It just gets no respect -- except from those of us who consider the ethnic enclave the closest thing to a hometown on this side of the Florida Straits. After all, La ciudad que progresa, the so-called City of Progress, is where you can find the most rustic essence of Cuba without the embellishments of upper-crust nostalgia, the kind of gritty place with character, where, as comedian Alina Troyano likes to say, ``mango stains never come off.'' Thick in the heart of Hialeah, next to La Copa Supermarket, where the butcher knows your name and your favorite cut of meat, is Asturias Restaurant, a well-known treasure to locals who have been coming here the past 20 years for an authentic dose of Spanish and Cuban cuisine. Good, solid food -- and well-priced. Some swear by the Wednesday special of vaca frita ($7.50 with two side orders), the popular Cuban dish of shredded fried beef topped with onions and sprinkled with lemon juice. Others are lured by the thick staple stews of both cuisines, the potajes ($1.95 bowl) -- Cuban ajiaco (a little bit of everything) on Monday, red beans on Tuesday, garbanzos on Wednesday, chícharos (dried peas) on Thursday, fabada (the traditional white bean and chorizo sausage soup of Asturias) on Friday and the thick Galician caldo gallego with morcilla sausage on weekends. The days of the week are crucial to dining here. We enthusiastically ordered the arroz con pollo ($10.95, chicken and yellow rice) listed on the menu as a house specialty, but as soon as the words rolled from my tongue, our waiter chimed in: ``Oh, no. That will take 1 1/2 hours to make.'' Come on Sunday if you want arroz con pollo a la chorrera made from scratch, but come early, says owner Ricardo Jara. The dish is so popular sometimes it's gone by 4 p.m. Without a choice, we surrendered to the day's specials, let our waiter (impeccably dressed in formal black pants, white shirt and bowtie) make suggestions, and were not disappointed. He started us with an avocado salad ($3.95) that was way too plentiful, even with three at the table. And a nice touch: Only one of us wanted a glass of wine. No problem for our waiter, who willingly opened a new bottle of the Chilean Casillero del Diablo merlot ($2.95 a glass, $14.95 a bottle). On a slow night when few people are likely to order the same, that's the kind of gesture that makes diners return customers. From the list of the day's specials, quite varied for a small neighborhood eatery, the snapper fillet stuffed with shrimp and topped with Swiss cheese ($9.95) was fresh and bursting with flavors, especially when combined with a side of white rice and maduros, some of the best golden sweet fried plantains we've had in a while. The calorie-conscious can simply remove the cheese topping, but who wants to remove a layer of flavor? Better to walk it off later. Another fabulous entrée, the churrasco steak ($8.95), is neither Cuban nor Spanish but a favorite Nicaraguan and South American long cut readily embraced by the Cuban crowd. This one was tender and juicy, the way a great steak should be. Accompany it with a side of crisp mariquita plantain chips ($2.50 as an additional side or appetizer) and it's heavenly. In a restaurant that calls itself Spanish -- the restaurant is named after the northern province of Spain where the original owners came from -- the seafood is serious stuff. We couldn't leave without sampling the enchilado de langosta ($26.95). The generous portion of lobster chunks was well seasoned in a tomato sauce, but was not as fresh as we had hoped given the rest of the fare. All of this in a quaint atmosphere of tropical matching curtains and tablecloths in the hue of Marlins teal, a decor that could be greatly improved by simply adding real lush ferns instead of the plastic ones now there, and at least on the weekends, perhaps adding fresh flowers to the vases on the tables. The small parking lot is a little rowdy, unlined and unstructured but there's some construction in the area. We couldn't help but notice in one corner a poster of the late Cuban-exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa and the famous ``Adelante'' quote from his death bed, urging exiles to continue the fight for a free Cuba. Politics and dining might not mix anywhere else, but here, it's expected and even a nice folkloric touch. You simply delight in the passion and move on to dessert. We went for the twice as sinful taste of a dulce de leche flan ($2), a caramel custard made with . . . what else but the trendy candied milk. Unlike lighter, fluffier imitations, this was one sturdy, hard-core flan, because in Hialeah, the food is the real thing, baby. Criollo all the way.