Black Bean Deli in Orlando, FL

Black Bean Deli has been around for a long time now. They always win awards for the best Cuban food in the Orlando area, but I didn't get a chance to eat there until the past year or so. Since then, I've returned several times to their Orlando location on 50.

I had the Ropa Vieja lunch special on one visit. Tender, stewed, and shredded beef was served alongside black beans, rice, plantains, and a salad. I was surprised when I got the plate of food. Many of my previous experiences with Cuban restaurants involved mostly tasty food, but poor presentation. To me, this plate of food was very visually appealing. Everything was delicious, so that made it even better!

During another visit, I had the Papas Rellenas Platter. This included all of the same sides as the Ropa Vieja, but the meat was replaced with two deep fried mashed potato balls. I had one filled with beef and the other with chicken. I don't think I've ever eaten papas rellenas before. I became a fan!

I also have tried Black Bean Deli's Cuban Sandwich lunch which includes the sandwich and black beans and rice. It was a typical Cuban Sandwich filled with meat, cheese, pickles, and mustard. Cuban sandwiches are always a little disappointing for me, and this was no exception. I always have the expectations that they should be more than they are.

Casavana Cuban Cuisine in the Fort Lauderdale Airport

I'm going to start a string of some blog posts about food from my recent travels outside of the Central Florida area. An airport is a good place to start talking about traveling.

I flew out of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Spirit. My plane ended up being delayed about three hours, so I had time to kill there. Eating is a good way to pass the time. There was an interesting choice of foods in Spirit's terminal. Rather than the typical airport chains, this terminal had a Kafe Kalik serving Bahamian food and a second restaurant called Casavana Cuban Cuisine. Each restaurant was split into a fast food and sit down section. Being that the prices were similar in both, I ate in the sit down section of Casavana.

I had the Pan con Bistec. This was a sandwich consisting of steak, onions, tomatoes, fried potato sticks, and cheese. The sandwich was disappointing. Eating the steak was like chewing on leather. Even with the cheese and vegetables, the sandwich was very dry and needed some sort of sauce (none present on the table). Somehow a whole lot of the potatoes ended up outside the sandwich rather than between the bread. The sandwich may have been disappointing, but I enjoyed my experience eating here more than I would have if the airport terminal only offered the typical McDonalds/Burger King/Wendy's options, plus eating here consumed time before my flight left.

Havana Bistro Cafe in Orlando, FL

I've visited a Cuban restaurant on Sand Lake Road a few times now. They are located in a strip mall across from the Florida Mall and are called Havana Bistro Cafe.

Havana Bistro has a normal menu where you can order things like sandwiches, but they also offer cafeteria style foods consisting of several meats and side items. Havana Bistro seems to serve lots of coffee as well and has a nice selection of various pastries and desserts.

On my first visit to Havana Bistro, I ordered a meal where you get a meat and three sides from the cafeteria style part of the menu. I picked the ropa vieja for the meat. This finely shredded beef was very tasty and tender. I had the steamed vegetables, plantains, and congri (rice & beans) for my sides.

I tried their chicken on another visit. This consisted of shredded chicken in a flavorful yellow sauce with slices of green olives. I had corn, plantains, and congri for my sides this time. Out of the two meats, I preferred the ropa vieja.

I also decided to get a pastry on my second visit to Havana Bistro. I tried the guava and cheese.

I liked the food at Havana Bistro. The meats were tasty, although some of the sides were a bit disappointing (steamed vegetables and corn seemed like they came right from a frozen food bag). Their prices are very reasonable for the amount of food served as well. I'd return.

Twisted Cuban Food Truck in Orlando, FL

There is an annual Halloween Festival in Downtown Longwood and food trucks were involved this year. The festival was located in Reiter Park, where the baseball fields and playgrounds were removed and replaced with a mysterious grass covered hill. The trucks attending were Gastrotruck, The Batter Bowl, and a truck that was new to me called The Twisted Cuban.

I tried their Cuban sandwich. It consisted of ham, roast pork, swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard on pressed Cuban bread. The sandwich was very tasty and was plenty to eat. It was also made extremely quickly by the standards set by most of Orlando's other food trucks that I've tried. I'd get more food from them in the future!

I tried the Twisted Cuban truck a second time at one of the Food Truck Bazaars. On this visit, I tried their fritas. These were two slider-size sandwiches consisting of burgers topped with fried onions. Unlike the traditional American beef burger, these contained other meats including chorizo which gave them really nice flavors.

Little Havana Culinary Tour

I was recently invited to go on a Little Havana Food Tour from Miami Culinary Tours. Little Havana isn't exactly local for me, but it just so happened that I was in South Florida on the weekend that the tour was happening. Little Havana was mostly an unexplored neighborhood of Miami to me. I had driven along Flagler on a couple of occasions, but never been to Calle Ocho, so getting a guided tour to both the neighborhood history and food was wonderful.

The tour started out at a couple of the local art galleries, and then it was time for the first food stop. Casa Panza was one of the only Spanish restaurants in Little Havana, and once seated, huge amounts of food was immediately brought to the table. First up was patatas aioli, which was sort of like a Spanish version of potato salad. This was followed by a bowl of chorizo, and then a plate of fried chickpeas.

Next up was a tour of a Cigar Factory, then more food from El Pub Restaurant. After meeting the 85-year old owner of the restaurant, food was quickly served.

El Pub served two dishes that are apparently Cuban staples. Black bean soup was served first, then several plantain omelets were brought to the table. The plantain omelet were completely new to me and I wasn't sure how I would like the sweet plantains mixed with the savory eggs. It turned out that this was a really good combination.

What visit to Little Havana would be complete without a Cuban sandwich? Our next stop was Exquisito Restaurant where they had several sandwiches waiting for us to eat on the go. This was as classic as Cuban sandwiches come with ham, roast pork, swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard on Cuban bread.

Next stop was Yisell Bakery for some guava filled pasteles. Can't go wrong with guava jam inside of a flaky crust. In fact, I actually returned here after the tour and bought a few guava and cheese pasteles to snack on for the ride home. Can't beat the price of $0.50 each...

The pastry was followed by a stop into Los Pinarenos Fruteria. This fruit stand sold all sorts of tropical fruit, everything from guava to mamey to these Hawaiian bananas.

We were there to try some freshly juiced sugarcane called guarapo. Stalks of sugarcane were fed through a machine and lots of juice came pouring out the other side. This was my first time trying sugarcane juice and I was a bit surprised at the flavor. The guarapo was nowhere as sweet as I was expecting...

A couple of city parks were toured in between some of the food stops, including Domino Park where a large congregation of old men (and a few women) were all participating in very intense games of dominoes and chess. Another park featured a memorial to the people that died in the Bay of Pigs, although I was actually more fascinated by the animal remains scattered around a nearby tree where Santeria is practiced. Back to the food though, our final stop was at El Christo Restaurant for some flan. I'm not a huge fan of plain flan, but we were served cheese flan. The cheese flan was somewhere between a normal flan and a cheesecake, topped with a sweet, syrupy sauce. Really tasty!

After enjoying our flan, the food tour of Little Havana concluded. I had a great time and definitely learned a whole lot about the history of Little Havana and tried foods that I probably wouldn't have tried otherwise. I've heard from quite a few people, as well as from experience, that Little Havana can be somewhat intimidating for non-Spanish speakers since so little English is spoken in the neighborhood. The Little Havana food tour took care of any potential communication issues and I got so much more out of my exploration of the neighborhood then I would of on my own. Totally recommended...

Be sure to check out Miami Culinary Tours online and read all about this tour as well as some of the the other tours they offer:
Website: Miami Culinary Tours
Twitter: @MIACulinaryTour

Casa de Chef Food Truck in Orlando, FL

We're in the middle of somewhat of a street food renaissance in Orlando. New food trucks are popping up all the time. We are quickly getting a vast array of food type offerings, and there are now food truck events almost every week. One of the newest food trucks in Orlando is called Casa De Chef on Colonial Drive.

They were parked in the Chevron Gas Station parking lot at the intersection of Colonial and Fern Creek. It was apparently their second day open when I visited. Casa de Chef served sandwiches, rice bowls, and kabobs called pinchos. I decided to try the very first item listed on their menu and ordered the Cuban Sandwich.

The huge sandwich had lots of shredded pork, peppers, pickles, lettuce, potatoes strips, mayonnaise, mustard, and perhaps some more fillings I'm forgetting. Casa de Chef definitely makes a very good sandwich, and the prices are good too at $4.50 for this large sandwich. I would gladly get food from Casa de Chef again...

Papi's Cuban & Caribbean Grill in Atlanta, GA

On my last evening in Atlanta before heading home, a collective decision was made that we should find some Georgia style barbecue for dinner. The problem was, nobody we asked could recommend anywhere that served smoked meat besides Shane's Rib Shack. A chain would defeat the purpose of having barbecue in Atlanta, so somewhere along the line we started looking for alternatives for dinner and came across Papi's Cuban & Caribbean Grill on Ponce De Leon Avenue.

The daily special at Papi's caught my eye. It came with a choice of steak, chicken, or fish with black beans, rice, plantains, salad, and bread. I ordered the fish which turned out to be tilapia. The fish was lightly fried and had great flavor. Beans & rice were tasty and the plantains were good as well. For $7 and change, this was a really good value for the amount of food that was included. I guess you don't need to be near Miami to find good Cuban food...

While the food was good, I should mention the horrible service at Papi's. The two specials at our table came out about ten minutes before the remaining sandwiches. No silverware was brought until after the sandwiches were served, so my food was getting cold by the time I could actually eat it. The drinks didn't come out until all the food was on the table which was kind of backwards.

Overall, Papi's had good food but bad service. Oh well...

El Palacio de Los Jugos in Miami, FL

I visited El Palacio de Los Jugos on Flagler Ave during a recent visit to Miami. It was in my conciousness since I remembered seeing an episode of VendrTV on the place so I decided to check it out.

El Palacio de Los Jugos was set up with several counters, each selling a different type of food. There was an outdoor pork counter, seafood counter, and sandwich/coffee counter. Inside, there was the juice counter as well as lots of fruits and vegetables for sale.



When I was going to order something, I realized that there was zero English being spoken here. It was really quite intimidating with my very limited Spanish language skills, but I was able to manage by walking up to the juice counter with Jugo de mamey, por favor. It got the point across and I received my cup of mamey juice.

Since this was the Juice Palace, I was expecting good juice. The mamey juice did not disappoint. It tasted like pumpkin pie in liquid form. The cup was huge and it only cost $2! Because I had previous plans for dinner (and they ended up being closed) when I happened upon El Palacio de Los Jugos, I unfortunately didn't try any of the food on this visit. I'm definitely making a point to return here to sample some of their Cuban food on a future excursion to Miami!

Oasis Cuban Cafe in Longwood, FL

I had dinner at Oasis Cuban Cafe in Longwood. Everyone's meal here started with a choice of soup or salad. I choose the salad, topped with beets, beans, and tomatoes.

I had the Pechuga a la Plancha for my main course. This was a tender chicken breast topped with grilled onions. The chicken came with congri rice (black beans & rice) and plantains on the side. Everything was good and was a whole lot of food!

Perhaps next time I'll try the pork...