Borinquen — Restaurant in Lake View Township

I ordered a pastele, pork jibarito, and a beer and it was, with tip, 20$.

The pastele was very good, and very filling and imo worth getting. The taste and texture was really good. It was a pleasant surprise to find so many meat morsels in the pastele (do you add the "s" if it's singular? Idk) and I would say it br sure to try it if you've had pasteles in the past.

Omg, the aroma from the jibarito was AMAZING. I've had jibaritos before, and this one was on point. It comes with a side of red rice with pigeon peas and I like to alternate taking bites of the sandwich and then of the rice, because the rice is kind of like a pallette cleanser and when you bite back into your sandwhich its like tasting your first bite again, and again, and again! And biting into the red rice with pork, the flavor brought me back to a memory of a childhood friend's home, where his mom would make a HUGE pot of arroz con lechon (sorry, if thats not what its called, but you know what I mean... Hopefully) and this spot on. Any food that takes you back to your childhood is worth getting.

My only criticisms would be the rice was a little dry, and from my experience, could be caused by the pot sitting on the stove for a prolonged period of time (which may not necessarily be the case here). And secondly, the after meal taste left my mouth feeling a little salty, but that could just be seasoning of the meat, or how it comes. Some people like salty. Nothing a glass of water couldnt remedy.

7/10, Would recommend. I'll be back for more...

A big sized and beautiful mom and pop puerto restaurant with lots of good salsa music that is not blasting and loud. I love the a la carte option bc you can make your own personalized plate of your favorite dishes. Carne frita (fried pork) was good w onions and just right for the portion size at $6.24. If you get the platter it’s $16 that includes one side of white rice and beans, gandules, maduros, tostones, or mofongo. So I would say that’s a bit pricey. The jibarito vegetariano was $12 for green and red peppers, onions and tomato and lettuce sandwich in between with tostones. The tostones were a but dry and hard and barely any garlic sauce and some salt. There werent much veggies but there was a lot of rice bc it comes on the side. Rice was good and fresh. The dessert was tembleque which is coconut jelly w cinnamon powder. It was good $3.64. It is vegan and daily free bc it’s And the flan was good but not too smooth $3.64. The owner and staff were very nice and chill and it was a relaxing environment. The prices in the menu were slightly less as it was marked up 4% maybe bc we paid by credit card. This is a place that definitely has the feel for a mom and pop place where you are eating the food your aunt and uncle cook. Home made. Not great but good enough. Another nice thing about the staff? The waitress warned me when i tried to order the beans on the side that it was cooked in pork bc she noticed i ordered the vegetarian jibarito. I really appreciated that! Plus Free...

I visited the restaurant yesterday & my mother also left a review down below. I will give 3 stars because the food was good but the service wasn't very up to our liking. It all started when we came in and we weren't greeted, we actually had to ask to be seated. This place is pretty big but they happened to seat us in the most darkest part of the restaurant excluding us from everybody else. In the review below it states we waited 30 minutes to order but honestly it felt longer than that. I understand being short staffed (which we didn’t know about and the owner completely gaslighted my mother and dismissed the way she felt in her response back. trying to justify how long a customer waited to dine in at your establishment is crazy. It’s one thing to be short staffed but another to ignore a whole table.) it doesn’t matter if she was only complaining about a 30 minute wait. You’re (the owner) running a business and it’s your job to cater to your customers, as well as their needs. As for the auto gratuity, it was not deserved, after we went through all we had to go through. Tips are based on service and we feel you did poorly at that. Now we could’ve came up to the register and told you to take it off the receipt but we...