back to cuba cafe

tiny, unpretentious place, tucked away in a strip mall - we discovered on urbanspoon while visiting nashville. great food, great service! authentic cuban home cooking! i grew up eating cuban food and this was just like going home. we had croquetas and tostones (crispy fried plantains) for appetizers - they were great! i had the lechon asado (roast pork) w black beans andriceand yuca w mojo. awesome! my wife had the ropa vieja (cuban slow cooked pulled beef w savory sauce) w black beans andriceand sweet fried plantains. absolutely sublime. we brought our own ice cold beer and wine. we ordered cuban bread pudding to go - because we were too stuffed to eat it there and took home lots of leftovers! if you love cuban food - you must visit back to cuba!

a bit of a disappointment.. as a native of miami and second-generation cuban-american, i really wanted to like this place. i was excited to find a cuban restaurant in the nashville area. unfortunately, i was disappointed. my whitericewas way undercooked and crunchy, and there was no fixing it because they only made one pot ofricein the morning for the whole day. it's not that hard to make properly cooked rice. if it wasn't for that, i would have enjoyed my meal a lot better.

what i had of the black beans was great, and the tostones and sweet fried plantains were pretty good. with that said, the portion size didn't really justify the price. my $2.50 order of tostones included about 5 or 6 medium to small pieces. i wish they had a batido de trigo, or wheat shake. i was going to have some cafe con leche, but after thatricefiasco, i changed my mind.

i don't know if i just had a bad one-time experience or everyone is somehow enjoying their undercooked rice, but it could have been a lot better.