I badly wanted to pay a visit to this restaurant from the moment I heard it carried faithful, Cuban and Spanish cuisine and for the most part, it didn't disappoint.
Ambiance is great. It has sort of an old Cuban colonial house decor though it wasn't as fancy as I thought it would be (the St. Augustine Lightner museum has spoiled me I guess).
Since I'm currently on a strict diet, I ordered their most popular salad (has a year number, can't recall it) and it was a very good one. It had plenty of lemon and Worcestershire sauce which made it more acidic that my usual salad fare, yet it was tasty enough for me to finish it all.
I also had two tapas (appetizers), one being the spinach-stuffed mushrooms (good, as expected) and the mixed pinchos with chorizo which tasted well but had quite a sad food-to-price ratio.
The tapas' size was the only problem I encountered. For the regular appetizer price of $7-$10 you get a very paltry amount of food. The pinchos had exactly two chicken pieces, two grilled onions (or similar vegetable) and one piece of chorizo (which was stellar, but geez, just one?). You get two mini-pinchos for a regular appetizer price. At least with the mushrooms we got 5 of them.
Come on, how expensive is it to make chicken, vegetable and chorizo pinchos? I would understand if it was something far more pricey and/or rare, but with just one measly piece of chorizo, I had to make sure I chewed it very slowly as to enjoy its fleeting existence.
If they had been more generous with the appetizers, I would have leaned closer to rating this establishment the big 5 stars, but they marked a noticeable, disappointing note. However, I liked the food and ambiance enough to give it another try at some other point. It doesn't hurt that its location is in a Stepford Wives-like portion of Celebration, which practically forces you to walk and relax.
For dessert, you may want to hop over to the nearby ice cream parlor. Yum!