Melanie Tam

Review of FAVELA CUBANA

Two friends and I came into Favela Cubana for a bo...

Two friends and I came into Favela Cubana for a boozy brunch on a Saturday with a 1:30 resso. If you purchase any brunch entree, you can get unlimited drinks for 90 minutes for an additional $22.95. This goes beyond your boring mimosa or peach bellini. They have caipirinhas, bloody marys, red sangria, sparkling mojitos, mango, peach, pear and apricot bellinis. My first drink was the caipirinha which was extremely strong but extremely sugary at the same time, which is the worst combo. So I just stuck to bellinis for the rest of the meal.

We started with the guacamole, which was not good at all. I was pretty disappointed. Then again, guacamole is Mexican so maybe I should have known better than to order it at a Cuban/Brazilian place. But even I could make a better guac than this. It tasted like they bought one of those packaged supermarket ones, squeezed it out of its little plastic baggy, and just added some chopped onions to it.

Thankfully, my entree was much better. I went with the Cuban sandwich and it was great. Ask for some of their hot sauce, which seems like it's homemade. It's not too spicy and was the perfect addition to my meal. The sammie also came with a pretty big salad. I ended up having to take half the sandwich home.

To finish our meal, they gave us these complimentary (non-virgin) mojito pops. Shout out to our waitress, Alicia who was extremely nice, and patient with our billion requests for extra napkins, hot sauce, etc. She did not seem annoyed once, not even when getting us drinks, which is almost a rarity at boozy brunch type places. I also liked that she did not try to push the unlimited drinks option on us. She told us right from the beginning that it would only be worth it if we were planning to have three or more drinks. Otherwise, we should just do a la carte.

Will definitely be back to try their chorizo croquettes, or their $1 oyster/clam happy hour.