Harry’s Seafood, Bar & Grille, St. Augustine, Florida, February 4, 2017

Yet more birthday celebrating in St. Augustine. A day or two before we headed down to St. Augustine, ConnieLou found out that our friends, Robbie and Dottie, were going to be in town too so we took advantage of the opportunity to get together for supper. ConnieLou and Dottie were close friends in middle school and high school. Robbie and Dottie live about thirty minutes away from us. We try to get together every now and then but we haven’t been very good about it lately so we all thought it was sort of funny when we made plans to get together somewhere six hours from home.

A couple of weeks ago Jenna told us about a new restaurant that had opened on St. George Street called Prohibition Kitchen. She’s been there once and said she enjoyed it. We looked over the menu and decided that it would be worth checking out so we planned to meet Robbie and Dottie there around 7:00 for supper…on Saturday night. OK, you probably know where this is going…new restaurant, prime time, Saturday night…yep, we were gonna have a wait. What we didn’t expect was that it was going to be a three hour wait. Needless to say we decided to shift and adjust.

Jenna told us that some of her friends at Flagler had mentioned that nearby seafood restaurant called ‘Harry’s’ was pretty good. ConnieLou gave Harry’s a call, got us on the seating list and found out that the wait there was a much more tolerable 45 minutes. About that time Robbie and Dottie walked up, Connielou explained the situation and we started walking over to Harrys which was only a couple of blocks away. Harry’s Seafood, Bar & Grille, as it’s properly named, is part of a local chain with five locations including the St. Augustine location and is described as “A New Orleans Style Restaurant”.

Once we were seated we ordered our drinks and looked over the menu. Yeah, we could have been looking the menu over while we were we were waiting but hey, we were having a good time catching up. As usual, there were way too many dishes that sounded really good but as often happens, one stuck out to me…Shrimp and Grits. I’m a sucker for shrimp and grits. ConnieLou decided on Chicken and Grits and Jenna chose Shrimp and Crawfish Pot Pie. Robbie and Dottie ordered the Blackened Chicken with a side of Grits and the Fresh Market Pasta.

With our orders placed we resumed catching up. Yep, more catching up…I said it’s been a while since we got together, right? Once our plates arrived our table got strangely quiet…like our selections were really good and eating was more important than talking quiet. OK, maybe we weren’t all that quiet but the food was quite good. We all decided that we had room for desert so slices of key lime pie and pecan pie were ordered along with an order of bananas foster bread pudding…none of which lasted very long. After dessert and some more catching up we paid our check and waddled out to go our separate ways.

So how did Harry’s rate on the Thumbs Scale? They got an easy ten out of a possible ten. Harry’s definitely made our St. Augustine repeat list but there are so many places to try in town that it’s hard to say when we’ll make it back…but I’m pretty sure we will. Someday.

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The Cuban Cafe & Bakery, St. Augustine, Florida, February 4, 2017

The birthday celebrations continue. ConnieLou’s birthday was week before last and mine is next week. With the two being only 18 days apart we usually end up celebrating with friends and family for at least a month. With Ashley and Jenna in school at different colleges several hours apart, it didn’t work out this year that we were able to get all of us together in the same place at the same time. We spent some time last weekend in Athens with Ashley then headed to St. Augustine to spend some time with Jenna.

This is our first trip to St. Augustine that our schedule hasn’t been, at least in part, dictated by a schedule of events so we got to spend our time just being tourists and doing tourist stuff. We spent the morning checking out the old Spanish fort, the Castillo de San Marcos, and then checked out a few of the shops along St. George Street. Lunchtime rolled around and before we could get our usual ‘where do we want to go for lunch’ non-debate going, ConnieLou said “Hey, how close are we to that place Robby told you about?” The place she was referring to was The Cuban Café & Bakery. My buddy, Robby Richardson, and his wife Kim have been recommending this place and raving about it since I first mentioned that we were heading to St. Augustine to take Jenna for a campus visit at Flagler College a little over a year ago. It’s been on our list of places to try but we just haven’t managed to be in the right place, in the right mood, at the right time…until now.

The Cuban Café & Bakery is a tiny place, as many of the restaurants in St. Augustine’s historic district are. There is a service counter, a small prep/kitchen area and eight, maybe ten tables.

ConnieLou and Jenna placed our orders while I occupied the last open table. I decided on a classic Cuban sandwich, ConnieLou and Jenna opted for the hot ham & cheese sandwich and we split an order of fried plantains.

It took a little time for our order to arrive but after walking around most of the morning we didn’t complain too much about having as few minutes to sit. We also weren’t complaining when our sandwiches and plantains arrived piping hot. My sandwich was as good as any Cuban sandwich I’ve had before and ConnieLou and Jenna didn’t seem to be complaining about their hot ham & cheeses. The plantains were quite tasty too.

So how did The Cuban Café & Bakery rate on the Thumbs Scale? We gave it six out of a possible six despite having to wait a bit on our orders…yeah, it was that good and yeah, we’ll be back.

Many thanks to Robby and Kim for the recommendation!