El Mocho Cocina Cubana — Restaurant in Stock Island

BEWARE. Check your receipts!

Hard to give more than one star when they rip you off, no matter how good the food is. Tamales were awesome. Everything else was just ok. As other reviewers have mentioned, they add an automatic gratuity to the bill and don't tell you if you tip on top of that. I can't necessarily fault them for that, though I wouldn't allow my operation to run that way and would require that my staff notify patrons if it looked like they may have accidentally tipped twice. I ordered food to go. The woman who rang me up (Mariam) is the one who asked me if it was to stay or to go. She added on an automatic gratuity that is only for those who are dining in, and rang me up as dining in. The menu says there's a $0.25 cent charge for take out, not an automatic 18% gratuity. She knew I was not dining in, but entered it as dine in anyway and took the gratuity. I did not realize until I was gone, thought it might be an honest mistake but 1. she's the one that asked if I was staying or taking out. 2. Other's have left similar reviews of being scammed this way. Check your receipts!

On top of that, you can't hear yourself having a conversation in there. The kitchen is right behind the registers with no separation. There's so much noise pollution in there it creates for an uncomfortable place to wait for your food and dine in (even though I did not...

The most average Cuban sandwich I ever had. After seeing the reviews, I thought I was in for a treat. It had all the earmarks of a nice little "find" slightly off the beaten path, Cuban staff at the grill, friendly employees and it appeared to be authentic. However, the Cuban Mix sandwich I ordered to go was a disappointment in many ways: First, the meat (lack of) looked like it came from Subway - thin, bland, sparse. Second, even though the sandwich was pressed, when I bit into it the meat and cheese were still refrigerator cold! And Finally, the sandwich was tiny - the full size sandwich is about 6 inches...maybe. For 8 bucks I don't expect a giant hero, but with the lack of meat the cost to produce this blah sandwich has to be about 75 cents a unit. I would have preferred to pay a little more, and get a properly made sandwich with more than 2 pieces of meat the thickness of a dime on it. What a let down, even worse than the rip off places one island over - at least for 10 or 12 bucks you get a "proper" sammich over there! On a side note - whoever started putting lettuce, tomatoes, onions and even ketchup on Cuban sandwiches should be shot. A real Cuban mix has meat (2 kinds of pork), swiss cheese, mustard, mayo and pickles...period! The rest of that junk is an abomination to the original Cuban mix sandwich so please...

Looking online for a good Cuban restsurant in Key West. El Mocho was listed as authentic Cuban food. I'm not concerned with the actual restaurant, it was older but clean. Staff was nice. Food was extremely bland. I guess I assumed Cuban food was more exotic than it really is. The fact that we were the only customers in the restaurant should have made us leave, but we were hungry and gave it a try. The best thing I got were black beans and rice. The beans were nicely seasoned and adding it to the steamed rice was delicious. However, the roast pork was dry and had no flavor. My husband ordered a Cuban sandwich that was just a cold ham & cheese sandwich! No pork, no mustard, no flavor. Next trip to Key West, I will ask the locals....