La Pata Gorda — Restaurant in Coral Gables

Crab Overdose 🦀

The amount of excitement I had towards this restaurant is unreal. Given that I’m from Ecuador, the fact that there is such a scarcity of good Ecuadorian restaurants always bugged me. Which is why I was so excited to see La Pata Gorda change the scene by bringing high class Ecuadorian food to Miami.

This restaurant is a chain in Ecuador and its many locations have been successful by bringing flavor and quality ingredients to their dishes. While the Miami menu is a fraction of what we can find in Ecuador, it is definitely the start we’ve been itching for.

We started off the meal with the croquettes. Incredible boom of flavor. A mixture of crab and plantain, why haven’t I had this before ?! The jipijapa ceviche is a new take to any ceviche you’ve had. This is very traditional to Manabi as they incorporate peanut butter to the sauce giving it a more earthy nutty take to ceviche. Make sure to use the plantain chips to scoop each bite.

Our next two favorites were the chopsue and the marinero. Both are great in size and will basically guarantee you’ll be full at the end. These are dishes that you’ve never had in Miami and you start to wonder why we waited so long to have these.

Areas of improvement ‼️ Service was satisfactory, the team was very slow to refill water and would often need to be reminded to refill

The crab claws were said to come with 8 portions we only got 6 (as pictured )

One of our orders was not placed in the system so we had to wait for the dish to be made

We were told there was no lemonade but heard many people order lemonade. Since we were next to the bartender area we even saw the lemonade be served.

The attitude of our waitress overall was standoffish. We were so excited to try out this place and she slightly ruined the experience

CARAPACHO CROQUETAS - 18 Ecuadorian mangrove crab meat with sweet & spicy plantains. Served with red pepper aioli.

CRAB CLAWS - 26 Envolved with the pot flavor and criolla sauce (8).

JIPIJAPA STYLE - 27 An iconic Ecuadorian ceviche: shrimp, octopus and the catch of the day with roasted peanuts sauce and citrus marinade. Topped with avocado mousse.

CHOPSUÉ - 27 Crab meat served with white rice or cocolón, fried plantains, our house special sauce and criolla sauce.

MARINERO - 28 Shrimp, squid, crab black clam Served with fried plantains.

Areas of improvement!! Service was satisfactory, the team was very slow to refill water and would often need to be reminded to refill The crab claws were said to come with 8 portions we only got 6 (as pictured) One of our orders was not placed in the system so we had to wait for the dish to be made We were told there was no lemonade but heard many people order lemonade. Since we were next to the bartender area we even saw the lemonade be served. The attitude of our waitress overall was standoffish. We were so excited to try out this place and she slightly ruined the experience Untimely serving of dishes. One of our party members had their main served as soon as the appetizers were served. The next two mains did not come out for another 30 minutes. The missed main did not come out for another 15 minutes. Timing needs to...

Ok... so here is my experience a this restaurant. Saturday night with my wife was date night, and she took me there as a surprise, seeing I'm from Ecuador , Guayaquil to be exact. So the evening started nicely ...excellent service by our waiter. The first thing that I ordered was a Guitig bottle and i took myself back to that old Guayas So we decided to get some drinks. Now, for some reason, they said that they don't have a full bar, but it seems strange to me that they are able to be Selling spirits like vodka and gin, but not whiskey, but ok ...so we decided to get the Guayaquil mule ... So curious, as we are, we asked , what your restaurant calls this drink .. So the waiter just said that is called like that because the theme of the restaurant, is just a regular mule, but they call it a Guayaquil mule because the restaurant is Ecuadorian restaurant. So honest to say, I was disappointed because I was expecting amazing drinks Ecuadorian style, like a canelazo or something made with aguardiente or a rum like rum Canuto but nope, pretty much your run of the-mill Miami bar, without whiskey for some reason, but ok , so we move on to appetizers We order the Ecuadorian Platter is a combination of Bolones humitas bollo y muchines and to be honest very disappointed the food fell like it was microwave bolones and humitas very dry and the cheese was not fresh at all, so bad that half way I decided to just take it home and same some room for the main dishes, hoping that they will be better, well they worth not, I order for my wife the albacore encebollado she doesn't eat fish but i assure her that this type of soup she'll love because doing right the taste is amazing and I order a jipijapa style ceviche, so the encebollado comes out and the fish smell was so, so strong that I was smelling that fish to where i was sitting I added a lot of lime to be able to eat it, after that we have the ceviche, and it was just a standar taste nothjing out of this world, and they served with some type pf peanut sauce that doesn't make it any better ...so the whole experience was just not great ...I do have to say the service was amazing, and the place is small but cozy, but I was expecting and amazing gastronomy experience, but it was just a regular cafeteria food overprice trying to be something that's it's not trying to be too clever ... Ecuadorian flavors are amazing. Without the extra stuff, the encebollado didn't even have red onions or cilantro .... like I said, it was a very disappointing experience overpriced and small servings. I hope they take this criticism seriously and...

I want to say what everyone wants to know, how was the food? The items below is what we had.

Cangrejo Criollo: the crab was good but the legs were not too thick. However, keep in mind it is not crab season and it still tasted great because of the imported Ecuadorian seasoning!

Side of Arroz con Cangrejo that comes with the Cangrejo: tasted great

Chop Suey (cocolon): bottom layer was cocolon (crispy rice), middle layer was shredded crab, top layer was pico de gayo with a sauce (can’t describe it but tasted great) and diced maduros…..Absolutely AMAZING. I am not a fan of onions and I ate the whole thing!

Croqueta de cangrejo: amazing and great appetizers!

Complementary Mint shot (super tiny but it cleans the pallet).

Beer (Club): it was okay

Concha- we tried ordering but they were all out. 🥺

Experience: On a super hot day, I don’t recommend coming because you’ll have to sit outside and they don’t have fans. The food is super hot (temperature wise), which is amazing but you will definitely sweat a lot while you’re eating. We sat outside but asked if any table would come up to please let us know, so we can switch. That notification didn’t come. I brought up to our waiters attention that no one notified us and people were sat inside. At this point I was sweating bullets. He took into consideration our discomfort, apologised, and tried to accommodate as much as possible by providing me with with ice, ice water, and offered a beer. The weather is out of their control but I appreciated their effort and made me feel comfortable, when I was physically uncomfortable.

The Owner, Manager, and Assistant Manager stopped to check up on our table and tried to make conversation.

Our attendants were; Busser: Homero, super nice and Ecuadorian Waiter: Bairon Waiter Ernesto

The service was amazing and we had a great time!

Age range of our group ranged from...