Old Cuban Cafe — Restaurant in Alafaya

Great service, great food and fantastic athmosphere. I hadn't visited this place in awhile, and the last time I was here it was a bit of a small hole in the wall. Clean and nicely decorated, but small and easy to miss. Since then they've expanded a ton. Place is much bigger and looks great. I love that you can see the cook line, and it definitely whets your appetite walking in.

Place is set up for live music which is cool. I'm not a huge fan of Cuban music, but my wife is and she really enjoyed it. It does get too loud for my taste though, but I have a hearing problem and noisy environments make it really hard for me to communicate. Most people probably won't find it too bad, so I'm not gonna strike them for that.

The food is awesome, awesome, awesome. Black Bean Deli is kind of the standard around here for Cuban food, this place makes it look sick in comparison. I almost always get a midnight with fried plaintains. Both are awesome, the midnight is pretty hard to screw up, but the bread is soft and it has plenty of meat and toppings. It's very filling. Friend plaintains are nice and crisp on the outside and perfect on the inside. My wife usually gets this garlic chicken dish with red beans and white rice. It's really great. I'm not a huge fan of garlic heavy dishes, but it works really well here. And the beans are great. The one thing I didn't like here was the fried steak thingy, it just tasted bland and wasn't my thing. But I see plenty of other people ordering them so ymmv.

We usually finish up with an espresso and some kind of dessert. I think we had a flan last time. The Espresso was great, nicely roasted with a smooth flavor and a touch of cinnamon. The Flan was great as well.

Service has always been awesome here. When we first started going here we were like the only white people in the joint. We never felt out of place, and our server was super sweet. The crowd is more diverse now and the service is still awesome. Our servers have always been sweet, attentive and efficient.

I really can't say much bad about the place. It's awesome. If you like Cuban food definitely check it out. If you've never had Cuban food, well got get you some because it's good. If you don't like Cuban food then why you reading...

Transaction #108167 3/23/2022 1:57:46pm I will start with the great things. The food was delicious and a good portion for the lechon asado, shredded pork. The waitress Yeneisy definitely needs waitress training and English lessons. She is great at cleaning tables though. She cleaned tables instead of checking on our table the entire visit. We were confused when she serviced the table next to us that arrived after us but we said ok we will be next. She finally came to our table. She took our order (2 of us) with 2 of the same item. A few of the other tables got their food before ours but they did have sandwiches and ours were the pork entrees so we were ok with waiting. We were never offered the cuban bread while we waited. She finally brought us our food and it was delicious. She never once checked on us to see if we needed anything for 30min. We both had empty water glasses and were thirsty because of the salty food. She was cleaning 2 tables next to us and still didn't notice me waiving my hand to get refills. I told her we wanted 1 water and 2 To Go boxes. So she brought 1 box and 2 waters. Then I thought she was bringing our check to us and she provided the check to 2 other tables next to us that had their food after us. Then she came over and started removing the dirty plates from the table then I asked her for the check in Spanish to make sure she understood me. She finally brought the check and we paid and left. They did appear to be a little light staff but if she was trained better at waitressing and communicating with customers as she does cleaning then we would have been in and out much faster and a better experience. The main reason we keep coming back to this restaurant is the delicious food and Fernando the best waiter they have there. We have seen Fernando over 4 other visits and he is great and always a pleasure to have as a waiter. We were disappointed that today was his day off. If he can train Yeneilsy to be like him the restaurant would run so much smoother on the days he is not there. From now on we will call in advance to confirm if Fernando is there that day. Great job to the cooks making all the food as delicious and...

If I could give it a ZERO on service I would!!! So it's been a couple of years since my husband and I have been to this Cuba cafe, and I was quickly reminded why. When we arrived, we were well greeted then taken to our table. Rather than just look at the menu we got up to check the food selection behind the glass. Well, when I tell you we waited 10 minutes before my husband called 3 different servers until the last one told us that a server would be with us soon. There were at least 6 girls up front and there wasn't alot of customers. So we waited Maybe another 6 minutes before having our order taken. The server came back about 5 minutes later to tell us that what I personally had ordered would take about 10 minutes. Ok so my husband asked for everything to come out together. She bought out our sodas, my husband opened his i didn't open mine. So we waited another 20 minutes we were going to leave when the server came out and told my husband that they didn't have any more of what he had ordered. REALLY??? YEAH NOT HAPPENING...I pushed my unopened can of soda forward and told her we were leaving. She said " well your food is done".. oh so I'm supposed to enjoy my meal while what, my husband sits there to whatch??? My husband told her charge for his soda which he opened, ( honestly speaking, I wouldn't have charged for the soda after all we went through) Then at the register they wanted to charge for both sodas, and dared look at my husband sideways when he didn't factor in a tip. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? Yeah, we will...