Café Rojo — Restaurant in Carmen

We knew the food would be good & fresh but we didn’t know it would be THIS good and fresh! We ate here twice on different days and both times the food, atmosphere, attentiveness and kindness of waiters, quality of drinks, & more was just beyond perfect!

If you want a really good, super fresh meal full of vegetables & herbs and wonderful service that is healthy, delicious, & cooked perfectly with a Vietnamese bent, this is your place! We loved coming here in between days of eating traditional Costa Rican fare….best of both experiences! But guys—-to all these not-so-great reviews complaining about this not being an authentic Vietnamese place…..CORRECT! It’s NOT an authentic Vietnamese place and never did they try to seem that way! This is “fusion” baby! And done wonderfully (hard to do!).

First off, if you don’t get their coconut milk-marinated lightly smoked local trout (PS—it’s a very generous portion too!!), what are you even doing?! Even the staff will tell you: it’s the BEST. I’m a chef who lives in trout country of upstate NY and this is maybe the BEST trout I’ve ever had in my life….and my husband, an avid angler, passionately agreed. Just perfectly cooked meat with an incredible fresh coconut flavor, the smallest bite of heat & lime, and crispy skin that I devoured from both our plates! I ate the trout over the herbed salad with mint and cilantro, radish and lettuce and carrots and cucumber twice and still wish I could have been back to have it again!

The salad is an amazing price for a fabulous portion of fresh, perfectly made fare. We felt so en energized after and almost couldn’t finish it all! We were full for hours so we could spend 4 hours at the wonderfully cured Jade museum after lunch and not worry about becoming starving halfway through.

My husband also had the Chicken Bahn Mi and it was divine! Authentic? No. Absolutely incredible fusion food that made your mouth salivate just thinking about it? Yes! Also the bread was SPECTACULAR. Whoever bakes this is seriously knowledgeable in the French method and is on top of their craft! So good we would have happily eaten bread alone! And, the chicken was juicy, flavored sooo well, and cooked perfectly….like all their food seems to be!

Their spring rolls are so fresh & fun and we loved them with shiitake!

Their homemade Nuoc Mam sauce mix (shake it first!) was soo good and I loved that we could season everything ourselves. I doused my salad in this lemony-lightly fish sauce mix and it was glorious! Dotted with sriracha for heat & tiny dollops of their high quality hoisin, then mixed, the salad was perfect and I loved that I could add flavor to spots I missed while eating or make a bite of trout hotter or a cucumber bite more acidic or sweeter. Don’t fear saucing yourself— the waiters are so kind & passionate and happy to explain to someone unfamiliar with the ingredients just what ingredient is and their suggestions for each dish.

Menu is small but delightful, fresh, perfect. I loved their fresh juice drinks too like sour guava (Cas). All drinks are served with metal straws (yesss!!!!) and you can sweeten yourself (or not at all!) with a Housemade brown sugar syrup, which we LOVED because we love the fruit drinks as refreshingly tart without sugar. It was a thoughtful touch.

Oh and their desserts are wonderfully made too (who could expect less?). The passion fruit (maracuyá) tart was fabulous with fresh passion fruit & it’s crunchy yummy seeds on top and a brown butter pastry crust that was not too sweet or rich——it was wonderful and almost earthy as if it had freshly-ground whole grain wheat or something similar…..but not in a “crunchy” vegan mom way. More like in an earthy, nutty, perfect balance to passion fruit way. Darn good.

Great food, wonderful staff, and we loved the atmosphere & service. For visitors who don’t speak Spanish, worry not, most servers here are fluent in English too and are so hospitable.

Can’t wait to come back again...

I know this place has many 5 star reviews and perhaps they were well seserved but our experience was not of that level. Maybe it was a bad night or maybe it was just not to my taste but either way i did share this with the restaurant and feel that it might be helpful to other customers. First let me compliment the restaurant for great atmosphere and service and exceptionally tasty drinks. But and it's a big but...the food was very very very disappointing. The spring rolls (actually summer rolls should be the proper name) were incredibly dry and flavourless to the point of hard to swallow. If you tried to moisten them with the sauces the flavours were completely over powered by the sauce. The dry sesame seeds, the dry rice wraps (should be moist), the dry bitter lettuce, the dry strawlike carrots and some small unknown item in the middle were totally flavourless. The Bun was the base of both of our dishes and was cooked well but once again the toppings were problematic. The lettuse was extremely old, tough and bitter (tropical lettuce suffers from sun and heat and only young leaves should be used), the eggplant skin was actually inedible and the rest way too sweet the only way to balance it would have been rice vinegar or lime. The pork meatballs tasted like fish and salt and somehow managed to be be too dry and crumbly and too intense at the same time. The best part of the dish were the peanuts. I wish I had read a review like this before I had gone. I believe that the people preparing the food are unfamiliar with Vietnamese flavour profiles and therefore can only follow a set recipe rather than understanding what is required for a...

I am a bit surprised at the great reviews. Nice place, at the busy intersection so one can hear traffic and buses and it is VERY loud. I was on my own but it would be hard to have a conversation if you were with someone. I ordered shiitake rolls which were quite good - lettuce, shiitake, carrots and sesame seeds. Pretty yummy. And for the main dish I ordered Vietnamese sandwich with chicken. It came as a bun with chicken and some lettuce, carrots, radish and cilantro. Difficult to eat as it was a bit falling apart and came in a narrow dish and was very, very sweet at the bottom from whatever sauce. Too sweet. The bread was good and too little chicken - maybe 4-5 small pieces. I got the juice with blackberry and cinnamon and it was very refreshing. Service was VERY average, I had to wait for a long time before I had to wave down the waiter to place an order. Also, when I first entered looking for a table I wasn't sure if they sit you or I sit, someone just ambushed me and said "you need to wear a mask everyone needs to wear a mask when inside". I was like Uhm ok, no problem but not the best first impression. I don't understand what the rave reviews are about. 3 stars at best, for my food I would give 3.5-4 stars and for service a solid 3. Would not go back...