Bruni Mojica, 48, of Ronkonkoma, experienced a mini-miracle on a recent Saturday in Copiague’s Tanner Park when she and some friends turned up to listen to live music by the bay. The Puerto Rico native sat down at a picnic table, ordered some food and was miraculously transported to the boardwalk of her hometown on the island, Guánica. “It’s just like home,” she says.
It wasn’t just the palm trees and bay breeze and singer Gissel Garcia belting out old Spanish standards and current Latino pop hits that had Mojica and her friends jumping out of their seats to clap and sing along. Mojica’s friend, Yahaira Cordero, 42, of Mastic Beach, explains: “The best thing is the food,” she says. “We just had tostones (fried plantains) and chicharrones (crispy pork belly) and they were perfect.
” Tanner Park has long offered live music on the patio overlooking the Great South Bay during the summer, including live Latin music on Thursdays and Saturdays from 6 to 9:30 p.m. But those nights have traditionally been quieter than the wildly popular Tuesday Latin Dance nights at its sister property, Katch Venetian Shores, just east in Lindenhurst.
The owner-operators want to change that. “This is our sixth year running the venue in Tanner,” says co-owner of Cantina Bay and Katch, Katchlin Janawski. “We saw the Latin crowd that was going there, saw that there were not a lot of Spanish restaurants on the water, and we decided to go for it.
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