Papi's Cuban Grill — Restaurant in Lawrenceville

If I could give more stars I definitely would.

Today we visited this location on a whim while driving by. Boy we’re we surprised!

My daughter loves El Cubano ( Cuban sandwich) so she was excited to try this place out. From the beginning the girls at the front were nice and helpful. We were seated right away as it was 1:00 pm as we walked in. We did notice others already seated. Our server was Bojan K and he was gracious and very helpful with any questions we had. I think we might have taken him a little by surprise because within a few minutes we knew exactly what we wanted as we located it quickly on their menu. We ended up ordering a Reys Cuban Sandwich (El Cubano), Pollo Vaca Frita, and Camarónes al Ajillo. The Cubano Sandwich we just wanted to try it as we were a bit skeptical since we haven’t found a good Cuban restaurant out here. It was HEAVEN at the first bite. The crunch and Flavors were having a party in our mouth. When our main dishes came out we both were extremely happy with the flavors, presentation, and portion of the dish. The Chicken was amazing and perfectly fried . The tostones were great. When I say that we are absolutely excited to take a few friends with us to enjoy this place and hopefully spread the word. The interior and decor of the restaurant was vibrant and pleasing to the eye. We were seated at a booth and everything was clean and comfortable. Aside from the food the service was the absolute best and I would definitely recommend coming in and sitting at Bojan section if possible.

Note: we started eating before taking a picture so the plate was missing at least 3 or so shrimp and a few tostones as well. Also the dishes normally come with Salad according but at the moment due to a recall they didn’t have any salad at hand. Which we could appreciate very much..... Better...

When we got to the restaurant there apparently was an issue with another disruptive customer. We had our sleeping baby and asked if we can have the far table to not disturb anyone when the baby woke up. The hostess said she didn't want to sit anyone near the disruptive person. So we agreed on a far empty section that was still available for seating. Her manger came over as we were sitting and demanded she move us. I said hello and explained our request that lead us to that empty section resolution and I thanked her for her employees suggestion. She gave me a dirty look and said ugh only this one time I'll allow this because I only have two servers and one is new. I said thanks and we sat down. The new server Jessica came over and she was amazing. If the manager didn't tell us she was new I wouldn't have guessed. Jessica asked if the baby needed anything special for when she wakes up, she made a lot of suggestions and when I asked for more dressing she offered her favorites. I told her I trusted her and she said "omg really" and ran to get the options. Jessica explained each one and how they are prepared. When the baby woke up she got us a high chair right away and said she'd get her water and asked if we needed anything for our little one. Our little one was still tired so she was screaming at the top of her lungs. The other guests across the restaurant looked a few times but because we were so far away it wasn't that bad. But the manager started huffing which was weird so I just figured it was something else and not us. The food was really good, our server was excellent and the hostess was also very nice. It seemed like a great group of people working there from what we saw so I was confused why the manger was being so...

From the moment we walked in at lunchtime today, it was clear that there was not enough help and there would be a little bit of a wait. I understand in these times how those things go, so that was not a big deal.

Once we finally got to order our meal, it came out in a reasonable amount of time. However, my daughter ordered a steak sandwich (can't remember the actual name) that had meat on it that was so tough it was impossible to bite through. I ordered the regular Cuban sandwich in which I found a giant piece of bone and a lot of gristle in the pork.

When we finally got our waitress to come back so we could pay the bill, I told her what the situation was and she said she would speak to the chef about it. She did offer the menu to me (I guess to order some sort of replacement) but by that time we had been there well over an hour and I could care less about any other food. When she came back, she said oh don't worry that was just a bone and laughed about it -- to which I replied "well, it's not a very nice thing to bite into while eating a sandwich" and she basically had no response, and laughed.

Both my daughter and I have felt sick for the rest of the day, I took a bite of her steak, and it was absolutely gross. Needless to say we won't be returning after such a terrible meal.

The fries, rice and beans were fine. The rest really was substandard and not good at all. This was our second visit. First was over a year ago and the food was great. I guess today was an off day or things have really gone downhill since we...