Costa Azul Wine & Lounge — Restaurant in Carolina

We arrived for dinner and drinks and were immediately enveloped in a warm, swanky, jazzy nook with live music and a sultry ambiance. We had the pleasure of being taken care of by Angelita and she made our delight her mission!!

We began our meal with a bottle of The Fableist Cabernet Sauvignon, a beautiful full-bodied, but seemingly light, wine with vibrant, fruity notes of black currant and a hint of smoky oak.

We then ordered the Crab Cassava Cake and the Vegan Ceviche appetizers The Vegan Ceviche was a refreshing medley of bright and fresh vegetables in a light lemon broth with a super tasty Breadfruit Fritter. The Crab Cassava Cake was an absolute SHOW STOPPER!!! The crab stew was bursting with true Puerto Rican “Criolla" flavor and was exquisitely complimented by a luscious and light cassava cake infused with tart, creamy goat cheese As a person who has never had a traditional crab cake due to a serious aversion to mayo, I was so stoked to try this version and it was absolutely worth the wait!!

For our entrees, we selected the Grilled Salmon and the Chulekan. The salmon was perfectly cooked and served with asparagus and a hearty and delicious mashed Malanga (taro). The Chulekan is a traditional grilled pork chop preparation and Costa Azul has it perfected!!! The generous portion was incredibly flavorful and moist and topped amazing “mamposteo" style rice and beans. Both of our delectable meals were devoured with gusto!

Overall, Costa Azul delivers on flavor, vibes and innovation and is a definite DO NOT MISS if you are in the Isla...

Our experience was a bit mixed. My husband and I went for an early dinner, so we arrived a bit after 4 pm on Tuesday and we were the only clients there until about after 6 pm. I checked the reviews before we went and they all were really good and praised the menu, so we had higher than normal expectations. We ordered Pasta di Frutti Di Mare and Chulekan, and we had lava cake for dessert. Cooking times were extremely long. Not sure if it was because we arrived early, or maybe they were understaffed. My pasta was amazing, really creamy, nice and flavorful. Chulekan was nicely grilled, but a quite dry and hard to eat on its own. We requested to drink hot water with lemon and I guess it was not ordinary for the place. They did not have a teapot and servers had to heat up each of our small cups individually. We really appreciate that they did it for us though. Lava cake was really delicious and the flavors were thoughtfully combined in a dessert. I would recommend to order appetizers - hopefully it'll help with waiting for the main meal. For us it was about 45 - 60 min wait for the main course and then about 30 min wait for a dessert. When you're the only customer, it's hard to justify such waiting times. The staff was nice and they definitely tried to please us. I contemplated between 3 and 4 starts and decided to give 3 for the wait times, but food definitely...

We absolutely loved everything about this place and are so happy we chose it! The servers were warm and friendly and the service was top notch. Our waitress was lovely and attentive and thoughtful and we didn’t feel rushed in the slightest.

The food was out of this world and exceeded our optimistic expectations. I got seared scallops on a bed of mushroom risotto and my husband got the filet mignon special and both were bursting with flavor and absolutely delicious.

The ambiance is elegant, and romantic but modern and hip. There was even live music - a saxophone player. When the sax player started setting up I was worried it would be too loud since the place is rather cozy. But it just the right volume to add to the ambiance and we really enjoyed it.

As if this all weren’t enough, they even have a kids menu so the adults got to have wonderful cuisine while the little one happily ate chicken tenders and fries. And our waitress was so good with my daughter who is shy around strangers. :)

We spent the whole meal remarking about all the things we enjoyed about the restaurant and agreed that we were very happy we had chosen it. We all highly...