Miami Restaurant

Not impressed. I got the steak sandwich and it was decidedly lacking. The beans and rice lacked flavor and true Latin touch that I miss. The waitress was nice but I could tell she didn’t speak much English which was fine until you try to ask for anything special. Lots of middle aged /​older guys in here watching sports. Also saw a guy strongly disciplining his son which bothered me. To top it off, my stomach wasn’t happy that night over something that I ate from here. Probably won’t go back.

Little hole in the wall and it has the BEST Mofongo I’ve had in a long time!
Prices where good and the portions were big!

Very disappointing! Did not receive what I ordered. I ordered the steak plate for $ 15. I received one piece of steak and a lot of rice. I also ordered a side of French fries and received plantains instead. Not going here again!

We visited Miami Restaurant on Monday after the Marathon, as my husband was hungry from running 26.2 miles. It’s definitely a neighborhood gem and I see why. I had the steak sandwich and a pineapple smoothie; my husband and brother had the fried chicken plate with sweet plantains and rice & beans. Everything was delicious but the beans were probably the best I’ve ever had. The smoothie was also really good! Staff and other guests were also really nice and welcoming!
We’ll definitely visit again! So good!

Best food ever. Best mofongo I have had. Great service. Food is very custom made. They ask me how exactly I wanted my food and thats what I got. The sympathy of the employees is like feeling that you are at home. I felt like I was eating at my grandmas house.

Really not Cuban. It’s a Dominican restaurant. Food was excellent. The fried chicken rocks. Very flavorful. And the servers are exquisite. Forreal tho. baaaaaadd

I went into Miami Restaurant earnestly looking for quality Cuban food. My girlfriend and I could not be more wrong to give this place a try. The first red light turned on when we realized that most of the people there weren’t eating at all. They were just drinking beers and watching soccer. This was at a prime dinnertime on a weekend. The next warning should have been that the waitress, who is dressed like she is about to go to a nightclub, did not speak ANY English. I understand that English is not the first language for everybody but I would think that you would least have to be able to communicate the menu or to understand food allergies for customers.
Luckily, neither of us are fussy or have any outstanding food preferences so we just picked some very basic dishes off the menu. It took FOREVER for the food to come out and when it did, it was barely edible. The proteins were way overcooked, the food was bland, and the salad (carelessly chopped lettuce and tomatoes) did not have any flavoring AT ALL. Somebody tell me how any of this is excusable? I guess I should be happy I didn’t get food poisoning because the ingredients looked stale. On top of everything the price we paid for the garbage they tried to pass for food was egregious. Unilocalers do yourself a favor and skip this place unless you want to watch soccer matches and enjoy a couple bottles of Corona.

Let me tell you one thing and one thing only: It is very rare for me to go to a restaurant and not eat food. People who knows me knows that I don’t play around when it comes to food. I’m more of a «Friendo Y Comiendo» kinda gal. And even though I am Dominican and should be able to eat and enjoy this type of food, I am also very critical when it comes to it.
The service was great. The atmosphere was great. The food? Not so great! I ordered Mofongo with chicharron (it sounds iffy but it’s tasty, tasty if it’s done well) and it was greasy and the chicharron tasted awful. I asked if the Mofongo came with a little soup on the side (the soup makes it extra tasty and delicious) it didn’t. The Mofongo came with a tasteless shredded iceberg lettuce with a slice of tomato, didn’t like it either. I ordered a small side of fries, even though it was so big to be small (if you’re a french fries lover this is your place!) It tasted weird. So I stroked out. I also ordered Morir Soñando, to wash everything down but it was way too sweet and it wasn’t fresh out of the blender, I couldn’t drink it. But my mom and grandma both liked the rice, beans and chicken. The lemonades they had was way too bitter.
I came out of the restaurant with an empty stomach, not satisfied at all! But I recommended to those who don’t care about greasy food and stuff and likes huge portions of food.
Maybe I’ve being away from D. R for too long.

Great Food, Looooooong Waits, Very Pleasant Servers. Recommended, but set your expectations…
My wife and I stumbled upon this place and could not believe our senses. We were in the neighborhood for a gig in the recording studio across the street and found a parking space right in front.
When we walked in, we were immersed in the sounds of Spanish speaking a patrons and bachata playing very loudly over the speakers. The waitress at the counter handed us two trifold paper menus and we sat at our table and marveled at the selection. All the local favorites from the Cuban restaurants and cafes along Calle Ocho in Miami.
My wife ordered the carne mechada and I ordered the breaded beef. The food was spectacular. The service was great. BUT, the kitchen was incredibly slow… I mean bah-​rooootally slow, and could apparently only put up one plate at a time. My wife’s came out first and I told her to dig in. The waitress agreed and said the kitchen was very slow. She was halfway done before I got mine. We left room to share a flan which was out of this world. A great place to lounge and soak up the ambiance.
Dinner for two on a Sunday night took over an hour and a half. Way too long for a relatively slow night.
The food was amazing, but better to call ahead and place your order well on advance so the that you don’t have to wait 40 minutes to see a plate of food and have it go to someone else.
If you’re going to MIami, be prepared to wait and come ready to drink… The food took almost as long as the flight to Southern Florida and the drinks just help pass the time. This place is NOT for anyone expecting a five-​star experience.

Miami’s a great place to wander into after work for a quick bite and to just relax. They have all the classic dishes I remember including ropa vieja, chicharron de pollo, and their Cubano Especial (cuban special sandwich) which is large enough to keep you going all day. The service is great and the atmosphere as authentic as it gets. I felt like I just stepped out of the Clevelander Hotel to stretch my legs and wandered into a local place. Me encanta este sitio! Enjoy!

The atmosphere was pretty much just Latino guys lounging with glasses of wine and bottles of Corona and laughing at each other. The kitchen took half an hour to make three Cubano Regulars and they weren’t that good. The meat was kind of gamey and there were definitely some unfeasible gristle-​y parts. My parents owned a small sandwich shop for 2 years and made something similar based on requests of Dominican customers, just with fried chicken cutlet. I prefer theirs.
I have no idea why the kitchen is so slow. There were definitely more than three people working.

I really enjoyed my Cuban Sandwich it was one of the best. I would go again for sure!

This place can be intimidating for gringos who don’t know Spanish, I gotta be honest about that right up front. At least I was greeted in pretty decent English, all I heard throughout the restaurant was Spanish from everyone else.
I was looking for take out late at night, parking was pretty easy to find on the street but I’m not so sure about that during busier times in the day. It’s a pretty tiny place with a walk up counter to get your order on.
I studied the menu for about 5 minutes before making a selection, I ended up with two «dinner plates», one chicken and one steak. They both came with sweet plantains, white rice and a side of beans. The steak came in «red sauce» (how they described it to me). It looked fiery but when we dug in there wasn’t any heat at all which I’m ok with either way. The plantains and beans were flipping FANTASTIC! I love the creaminess of the sauce with the brown beans, I love how it seeps down in between the grains of white rice and flavors everything else on your plate.
It’s my fault I didn’t realize the chicken came out fried, it was also very small pieces of what I believe were the thigh and it included a lot of bone. I’ve had this style similiarly in Latin restaurants before, it’s just not my favorite. The shredded steak was my biggest complaint, much of it was overcooked and it had to be drown in the red sauce to make it more palpable.
I’ll be returning for sure, even though I’m not in JP all that often. Great prices for the crazy amount of food you receive and I thank them for manning the counter with someone who speaks English and can take an order without a translator.

I came here after i went to el mundo for a tour and i fell in love with the food. (anything that as RICE, BEANS, & MEAT makes me happy)
Everything here is amazing and it’s great to have lunch with someone or with a group of people! :)

I was bored at work so I took a hop to the closest area that had some restaurants. I saw this place and I liked the décor outside so inside I went. I looked at the menu and the first thing I saw was MOFONGO! I haven’t had this since I went to Puerto Rico 3 years ago, I had to get it.
So now I’m at work and I open it up and see a giant Mofongo staring me down. It looks good but what size Pilon did they use? it was huge; whatever more food for me! :) My first bite is awesome, just enough garlic so my coworkers don’t talk to me and just enough oil where I don’t break out like I’m back in the 8^th grade.
Here is the sad thing about this dish, second bite, hmmm no chicharron. Maybe it’s in the middle, third, fourth, fifth, OK were the hell is it, did i get some sort of vegetarian Mofongo that I don’t know about. I mean it was $ 8 dollars and plantains cost 50 cents a pop. So i dissect the thing in order to find out where it is…
NOWHERE! Someone stole my Pork. :(

I want to like this place, I really do. I think the food is great, and incredibly inexpensive; my chicharron has always been really tasty, and I have no idea what they do to the rice and the plantains to make them so delicious, but they really are, as almost every reviewer has said. Their other stuff is good too; my friend and I came here the other day and she ordered a milkshake, which she said was pretty close to the Platonic ideal of milkshakes. But I’ve been here three times and each time, the service has been sorely lacking.
The second time I was here, my party and I waited upwards of an hour to get our food! I’m not exaggerating — we timed it. There was *no one* in the restaurant, so we had no idea what was taking our food so long. I thought maybe this was just a fluke so I came here again.
So first, I order chicharron with rice, plantains and beans. The waitress brings out the chicharron, but no rice and beans. I wait about 20 minutes. I ask the waitress where the sides I ordered were, and she said, «Oh, you wanted the special?»
Later on, I asked the waitress three times — once in English, twice in Spanish — if I could have water. All she did was nod and say «yes,» and I didn’t get water until the third time, when I came up to the counter and asked for it, when a man (whom I presumed was the manager) gave it to me.
I didn’t finish my meal, good as it was. The waitress asked me if I was done. I wanted it to go, but she didn’t box it up for me. Sigh.
I wish I could say I’d be back again, since the food really is quite good. I’ll grab it to go next time and see how that goes, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit down here again, unless I have two hours to kill and absolutely no other way to do it.

B

1^st and foremost, anyone I mean anyone — Cuban, American, Mexican, Dominican, Rastafarian, Vegetarian, Neapolitan that can say that this place is better that El Oriental Cuba either has no sense of smell or has been hitting some kind of pipe. Iam sorry but I will organize a plate by plate side by side challenge, I will fund it myself.
The problems: Most every dish is not avail. IE. they do not attract a crowd = food sub par
they do not give a care about clientele IE this is not the focus of the business. Cuban sandwich OK cause we were starving. Tostados OK .
Really what is going on here = greasy take out.
Sorry if I offend anyone — but y’all know what really goes on here.

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!! walked in and felt like i went into another world! awesome music playing, cool pictures everywhere, tasty drinks in the fridge, and grub on the grill!
I got a sugarcane ma’bi drink it was sooo delicious, and some rice, beans, chicken, and fried sweet plantains. it was SO TASTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
so tasty! i want to take everyone i know to this place

Welcome to Mi-​a-​mi… Bienvenido a Mi-​a-​mi! While the mention of the American Havana may evoke images of South Beach and the Cuban aristocracy to some of us, Miami Restaurant in JP offers us a more proletariat-​like perspective of that bastion of US Cubanía called Miami. Nothing wrong with that at all; I just like to take a philosophical approach to restaurant names and how faithful to their namesake they are… Miami passes that test with the caveat already mentioned.
I visited Miami Restaurant for the first time yesterday night after having called on the bus back to Boston from NYC to see until what time it would be open. Since El Oriental de Cuba, which I haven’t tried yet, was not going to be open past 8 pm and since I had to satiate my craving for ‘ropa vieja,’ Miami became the second option. I explained to the receptionist on the phone that I was pregnant and that if my craving wasn’t satisfied, I would lose the creature. That’s when she knew I was a fellow Dominican.
I finally got to the place with a friend and was impressed first by the in-​your-​face décor of baseball player photos and the countryside bachata being played. That’s when I knew that the place wasn’t necessarily all that Cuban, but since I’m Dominican I was ok with that. I ended up ordering an entrée of chivo guisado (goat in stew), which immedaitely brought me back to the island of my origins. The rice was perfectly cooked, as well as the red beans… and the experience was all in all a Freudian journey back to the simple pleasure of enjoying a great meal from your childhood.
With amazingly cheap prices, Miami will become my first stop to satiate subsequent cravings catalized by that nostalgia of my beloved Dominican Republic.