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!
