3555 SW Eighth St., 33135.
Standing proud on Eighth Street in Miami, is this grand sign informing visitors of this Cuban delight, Versailles Restaurant. It is actually quite a big establishment, the shear size of the restaurant is note worthy but it also has a to-go coffee house and full bakery next door. You can literally eat lunch, grab a coffee and get dessert at the bakery… which is exactly what we did. Although you can tell that they want to attract tourists to the restaurant, I have to say that once inside, you will see a lot of Miami natives chowing down as well. The decor can be compared to IHOP, nothing too fancy, but lots of mirrors and glass.
Once we sat down, the food came to us. They brought out some of their signature garlic bread to start. The bread was really tasty and very very oily… can you tell? The brave one out of us actually dipped the bread back into the oil to make sure she got all the greasy goodness.
Oh come on, we’re on vacation, let’s get an appetizer… that was my theory. I was really looking forward to eating Cuban cuisine so of course I wanted to try as many things as possible. So then, I took the liberty of ordering the ‘fried combination for 2′, $6.95. It comes with 4 croquettes (cheese/ham), 4 turnovers (empanada-like), fried yuca, mariquitas and mojo. Croquettes are good of course, fried potatoes always hits the spot. The turnovers I didn’t care for, the fried yuca yum yum, and mariquitas? I am just going to assume that they are calling plantain chips that. OH my gosh, I have a thing for plantain chips, I think it is my #1 snack food of all time. I eat and eat and eat it till my mouth is all blistered from the sodium and fried goodness. And mojo! Isn’t that just the funniest word to use for sauce? I’m thinking this is some kind of cilantro cream sauce. I can just imagine servers saying “would you like some mojo on that?”, lol!
All that fried stuff and you get thirsty, quench it with a tall glass of Cuban mojito! The mojito even came with a strip of sugar cane for decoration. I didn’t really drink too much of this, I was more focused on the food aspect of this restaurant. From what I did gather, it was more carbonated than the mojitos I’m use to, but still very good. If I only was a mixed drink girl…
For the main squeeze, I ordered the very traditional ‘ropa vieja’, $10.50. It is essentially shredded beef in a tomato creole sauce with fried plantain and white rice. It tastes like beef stew… can I say that my mom makes good beef stew too? It was satisfying but I don’t think it is anything special. I would order it again just to have the dish, but I don’t think I would crave it too much. Oh and once again, my mom makes good beef stew!
Oh, this was delicious. Breaded beef steak Milanese, $11.95, breaded beef steak topped with tomato sauce and gratin of mozzarella and parmesan served with fried plantain and morose rice. It was really cheesy and reminded me of a chicken fried steak cheese melt. Who would want to eat chicken fried steak with white gravy after you can melt slabs of cheese on it? Next time, I’m going to request that, hold the gravy and melt some cheese. Morose rice is just a simple mixture of rice and red beans, fyi.
Roasted pork Cuban style, $9.95, marinated and slow oven roasted with morose rice and fried plantain (not shown). Cubans do love their pork, there was a whole section on the menu devoted to pork. The pieces I got to try was tender and fatty, a very good combination for rice. The pork was roasted flavorful-ly but I think the skin was really hard, discarded not eaten.
Broiled fresh salmon, $11.95, topped with lime cilantro butter, and served with yellow rice and fried plantain. Where is the butter? Well, someone was trying to be health conscious on an A) vacation and B) Cuban restaurant… needless to say, the old grandma that took our food order did not quite understand the idea of butter on the side. Worrying about your figure on a vacation is like being a vegetarian on a pig farm… they don’t go together. But anyway, I bet the salmon tastes fine on it’s own itty bitty self regardless, because they probably used ample butter to grill it.
And then there was chocolate. For dessert we walked on over to the bakery next door to select some goodies to take to the beach. I wanted chocolate, bad. So what I got was a three layer piece of chocolate cake on the right and chocolate mousse on the left. Now, take that piece of cake on the right and chunk it out the window. The focus was all over the mousse! It was oh so creamy and chocolate-y heavenly-ness… so much so that I wish I bought 5 more. But it being so rich, one person could probably only stomach at most one in one sitting. I was nice and shared it with the other girls, and they agreed with me that it was just that good. I think each item was under $3.
Well, Miami knows Cuban. If you ever travel to Miami, don’t miss out on this authentic restaurant. The food is great but the service lacked a bit. Perhaps it’s so authentic that they don’t practice restaurant etiquette. Our old grandma hostess/server/order taker brought out the bill to us and watched us study it for some time. Then I guess she got worried and felt the need to mention to us ‘no tip yet’, meaning the gratuity was not charged on the bill. Grandma, I know… I’ve been to plenty of restaurants in my days, and I know what a tip would look like on a bill. She was afraid that we were just going to pay and not tip… no way… not us!
Cuban food is not know to be healthy and the closest thing they serve that comes to vegetables would be the fried yuca, onion topping, and mint in your mojitos. They also like fry a LOT. Definitely not an everyday cuisine for me, but I got to say, frying does make everything taste that much better.
