El Palenque Pizzería Cubana — Restaurant in Hialeah

The owners of this establishment hit the jackpot! -Great location but horrible parking: on a busy intersection, across from Hialeah Hospital, inside of a gas station, but parking is a complete mess! During lunch time/peak hours there is absolutely no parking available, folks just pull up and occupy the gas pumps for the 10-15 mins it takes to prep your pizza. I recommend calling ahead and doing pick-up to avoid the parking situation. -Small but popular menu for the demographic in Hialeah. Quite a few different pizzas on the menu, I tried the Ham&Cheese and the Hawaiian, neither was nothing super special, I was not blown away, the dough was soft and airy, edges crispy, topping were average. I would not try again. The milkshakes/batidos I had (mamey, guava) were pretty good—these are made from fruit flavored ICE-CREAM and not the actual fruit, so if you’re on a diet, these are not the batidos for you. I absolutely LOVED the guava batido, definitely a Cuban/SoFlo flavor! I saw a guy buying an entire bucket of ice-cream there but its not on the menu, guess you can ask if you’re having a party or something. They also sell desserts, see my pics for all menu items. -Good prices : see my pics for prices -FAST service!! The girls working there should get an award or pay raise, they are answering phones, making shakes, taking orders, etc, etc. They are actually courteous and not lagging or talking among themselves, I was really surprised!! I hope they get paid well, they deserve it! -Overall: I would not try this pizza again only because it is average and there are lots of other Cuban pizza joints in close proximity. The batidos I might do again, maybe try other flavors…if they can get that parking situation right. For what I can see, this place is clean and is a pretty successful...

I like the pizza here, I am only leaving a 3 star review beacuse Cuban pizzas are suppouse to be loaded with chesse or at least have more than the little portion that they use and they dont offer large pizzas in the menu, and for some reason the pizzas look smaller than a year ago, every time that I ask for my pizza to be crispy the crust is crispy as always really good but the rest of the pizza is still soft and white looking is almost like all the heat of the oven was focused on the crust🤷🏻‍♂️,I can understand because most of the times they are really busy and is not big deal I just put it in the oven for 3 more minutes when I get home and problem solved. But please I get that selling small pizzas can be more profitable than selling large ones, but we as custumers should at least have that option, every time I go to a friend house and I want to take a pizza over there I have to be asking how many people are going to be present and that completely spoiled the surprise. Once again I get the business side of things specially with the chesse but long term thats not a good strategy, because customers can see through that and looks silly. I will be changing my review in the future, if they improve,...

The pizza and the place are overrated. The texture is like a round slice of white bread with grated mozzarella and sliced ham, then oven toasted. I picked the 'Neapolitana'. I believe the place has a draw due to the location and the nostalgia because of the name, 'La Pizza Cubana'. The combination of those two things has the place booming with business, at least by those who don't know a better pizza. My personal 'Neapolitana' was $14 with a strawberry smoothie. I had to wait 20 minutes, standing up, for that! I've had much better! Plus, there is no where to sit and enjoy your pizza. That intersection is incredibly noisy. The loud metro-rail, the gas fumes from the intersection, the car fumes of cars fueling up, the people standing outside and speaking real loud, etc. Not for me. Never again! Their smoothies are excellent, I must say! I gave the place...