La Duni Latin Cafe

My favorite place. Top notch service and food. Best Carne Asada Arrachera, chips and salsa in town. Oh and did I mention the deserts. The deserts are to die for. The Chocolate pudding and the Cuatro Leches cake are the best.

I kept hearing about this place over and over again, but have only finally come to visit! I’m disappointed I knew about this place all along, but just got around to visiting. because it’s DELICIOUS! If you’re thinking you’re coming here for Mexican food with some chips and salsa, you are definitely on the wrong train of thought here. Think Latin American cuisine, dressed with plantains, a light and fluffy rice, and a rich black bean side dish. From pan seared fishes, to roasted chickens, and even a nice skirt steak, they’re menu seems to have quite the assortment to fit everyone’s needs. Although there’s rice, beans, etc, all their dishes are seasoned so lightly and fresh that doesn’t leave you feeling heavy.
Get the Pollo Aljibe and the Ensalada De Legumbres; skip the avocado hummus dip and the sangria.

Absolutely amazing! Atmosphere is wonderful and the food was outstanding! Highly recommend!

Delicious entrée, coffee and dessert! The service was fine, nothing stellar or over the top. I would recommend the Havana Pork!

Love this place, over and over again! Brought my parents here for some coffee and dessert and it was wonderful! We ordered the 4 slices for $ 27 and got a variety (quatro leches, the cinnamon roll, the Nutella, the Venezuelan chocolate) and they were delicious! We also ordered a scoop of strawberry ice cream which was very tasty and very true to the flavor. For coffee we had the white chocolate espresso and a hot chocolate, which were both very rich. Can’t wait to come back and try the brunch/​dinner menu. I knocked a star off because I called at 845pm to verify what time they close because the Unilocal and Google times contradict by 30 minutes and the gentleman on the phone answered with a window of between 9pm and 930pm. I asked for clarification as we were driving from a distance and didn’t want to be turned away if they were closed when we arrived. I received a wishy washy answer of in maybe the next 20 minutes. I’m glad I took the gamble and went anyway. For the record they were still seating guests at 10pm for dinner when we were leaving.

Pros
Peach bellinis
Pork Lomo sandwich
Yucca fries — always perfectly cooked (I’ve tried making them at home and thoroughly sucked at it)
Atmosphere — the décor and music always make me feel like I am on vacation (which is why this is my favorite location)
Sunday brunch
Staff — always polite and thorough
Sweets — I never order dessert and I don’t know why because the menu is plentiful
Cons
Usually an older crowd
Always seems like my meal is missing something but I’ve never been able to put my finger on it

The food was descent. My husband enjoyed his tacos but everything is over priced. This wasn’t a very kid friendly place. The two high chairs they brought us were both broken so had to hold my child through the meal. I wouldn’t come back.

Brunched here one time. Had huevos rancheros, steak and egg, pork belly rancheros. Everything was tasty but very small portions and it was pricey. We also got the Latin Hot Chocolate, it was ok. Finished with the Cuatro Leches cake, soooo sweet and the cake was not soaked in milk enough so it was kinda dry. I grew up in Miami so I know a thing or two about Tres Leches!

Bartender would get more but for the owner/​manager. We come to Dallas for the weekend. My wife and friend stop in and have 4 mimosas (each). We (husbands) show up to meet them after a day of shopping. Nobody is out of control, but the owner/​manager cuts everyone off. Mind you I have just showed up (1 drink). The bartender would verify we were just chatting. Bar was empty. For the record, I called the manager a douche bag. I try to tell the whole truth.

«Where should we have brunch,» we wondered. La Duni looked good, so we drove over there. At 9am, we pulled up to the lot, where it looked like almost every spot was available. Nice! As we pulled closer, though, we saw that every single spot was blocked off by cones for the valet. No parking, so we pulled away and had brunch somewhere else.
La Duni, please keep YOUR parking spots available for parking, and let the valets hunt for street parking. It’s their job, and it’s what you, and we, pay them to do.

I really liked this place and it used to be my favorite brunch place. The food was good and they had great service. Things changed after I had my baby, I noticed that they don’t have changing table at the Henderson location. Bummer

I came here on a recommendation from a local that swears by it. While the bakery was beautiful and yummy the rest fell below expectations.
We got there before it was too crowded and we got a seat right away. However, our food took over an hour to get to us and was a bit cold when we got it. People all around us were getting swayed and their food and I was very hungry. I think the most frustrating part was that our server barley acknowledged our long wait. When he asked how we liked everything I didn’t dare send it back for a warm up-​who knows how long is be there.
I will say that the cinnamon roll we got was amazing.

Really fantastic place for brunch! I didn’t get to try their cakes but I had their wonderful cappuccino and their sandwiches and they were amazing!

I really like this place for brunch. Im vegetarian and I dont eat eggs so brunch can be a hard meal to enjoy. However, La duni does have a few good options and they are usually able to accommodate parties last minute.
The Pro’s:
–The chilaquiles were awesome
–The sun juice is amazing — half orange and half grapefruit
The Con’s:
–No traditional drip coffee

Came here for brunch before driving to Fort Worth. It’s an upbeat place with all sorts of customers, families, friends, dates. I got the huevos gauchos and wow it was great. It’s everything I love and it was made well. But my favorite was the mango limeade I got. What a great decision. So refreshing. So citrus.

Relaxing atmosphere, came in for dessert on a Sunday afternoon with friends. Triple chocolate and nutella cake slices. They were good, not great for roughly $ 9 a slice, about a 3.5 out of possible 5.
Coffees were excellent, café au lait, French cappuccino.
If you want a pleasant experience well worth it.

Definitely coming back, it’s a great place to hangout and quiet. the triple chocolate cake is delicious.

This is my go to place for a consistently delicious dinner on Friday night.
Once you’re seated, those house made chips and salsa appear on the table. The carne asada, flautas and the rice salad with crispy pork are tantalizingly well spiced and presented. And their generous with greens on every plate.
Cocktails are different and interesting. And the desserts are well known.

Decided to try this place out because a couple of ppl within the same week talked about the tres leches so felt like fate. I thought the cake was average while the price was steep. I think I just prefer my tres leches with fresh fruit, #healthy. I also got the Luna negra at the espresso bar and it was very strong which is just what I needed.

You know when you go to a new restaurant and find out that they really have things going right? Well, that’s cool, but what about a restaurant that still gets it right many months, even years, later?
La Duni has every opportunity to be one of those kinds of restaurants. But it isn’t. And never seems to be, Each time I try to make it so.
Went for breakfast several days ago and left again thinking, «Why, Grumpy? Why?» The place is quaint and cute, albeit now a bit dated as the months and years go by. The presentation of my Migas was outstanding, but after the first bite I found that someone went absolutely nuts with spices, mainly peppers. (I love spicy food but this dish wasn’t right.)
I’m not a fru-​fru coffee guy, although I’m also not a Jack Reacher «Make it black and in a fairly clean mug, please,» sort of guy either. So when I look at Duni’s list there is coffee and then there are three dozen kinds of fru-​fru coffee drinks. I tried to order one or two coffee types that would make sense in any coffee house in Europe or Latin America, and got a blank stare at first, but finally got something good to drink. Then there was another serving snafu that shouldn’t have happened and won’t be discussed in detail. Suffice to say the solution was for me to pay more.
One final service note. Ok, when there’s practically nobody in the restaurant except for an occasional cop who stops by to take a leak, apparent friends of the manager, and 1 or 2 other full tables, I would think that someone would say hello when you enter and goodbye when you leave. I’m not expecting scantily clad hostesses fawning over me, just a nice hello and goodbye when I come and go. Nothing. Nada.
Duni, is it time to start over?

As far as prices go, it’s a little on the high end.
However, the food is really prepared well. La Duni has several other locations, but this one is their home base and has also the most varied menu options compared with the others, especially since it’s the only location in the chain that puts more emphasis on South American offerings such as Colombian empanadas, Venezuelan arepas, and Brazilian coxinhas. These are offered during lunch, and were a good price since they were quite filling, even though they’re in the appetizer menu.
And can you imagine what I ate? Yup… all of those three! And I have no complaints about any of them even though these items were made with a twist, except for the Colombian empanadas which I thought was spot on and can even rival Zaguan’s empanadas (in both taste and price). The Venezuelan chicken and avocado arepa was made Mexican style — with the shredded chickens stewed in tomato broth. This was new to me, and untraditional — but I took a bite, and it seems to work well. The Brazilian coxinhas, or chicken pastries, were more like mini croquettes — and while they look nothing like the traditional coxinhas, they were very tasty, and I could taste the similarities.
Would I order these again? Probably yes. Can’t wait to return to try more of other things. But just this location. And if they are able to lower the price for some things, and make South American offerings available at its other locations, I probably would frequent this place much more often.
NOTE: Their coffee menu is also very impressive. I wouldn’t mind returning for the coffee as well.

Latin Café. Cuatro Leches Cake. Never heard of these two things before, so I had to drop by and add it to my list of food adventures. But my main motivation was that I was getting tired of honey chicken biscuits at Whataburger.
Note: $ 4 valet during lunch time, but I came here for dinner (5:00PM), so the lot was free to park.
Note 2: $ 8 cake slices; you might want to share with a friend to save and try multiple cakes.
The Food: Exciting food combinations that you don’t see at your neighborhood Tex-​Mex place or Chipotle. Award Winning desserts and an endless espresso/​coffee bar. There’s a little bit of everything for everyone.
Flautas De Pollo Con Ensalada (Chicken Flautas with Salad):
An order came with 4 flautas, fried to a delicate crisp and balanced with sweet guacamole, roasted salsa, and tangy tomatillo green salsa. The chicken filling was pretty dry and lacked flavor (–1 star), so the overall lightness of the entrée left me craving more flavor and filling. The salad had spring greens in a sherry vinaigrette, which was also light. Honestly, they tasted like light chicken taquitos from the freezer section of most grocery stores.
Rajas Con Queso Y Carne Asada (Roast beef sandwich with cheese & peppers):
My aunt kept badgering the waiter to change the Pan de Yama (Cuban) bread to French baguette bread. The waiter told us that the sandwiches were premade, so it was impossible. You could see the disappointment on her face, but we accepted it… and man, did we make the RIGHT choice. The Pan de Yama bread was sweet like brioche and soft like a donut. It complemented the strong beef flavor of the roast beef, creamy manchego cheese, and the earthy peppers. The manchego cheese was very flavorful and stretchy! I had to pull with my jaws and it was enjoyable. When you take a bite of the sandwich and all of its elements, you get a perfect combination of flavors. I can still remember the taste of that sandwich to this day. Highly, HIGHLY recommend this sandwich.
Note: I would given 5 stars to La Duni if the sandwich was the only thing I ate there.
Cuatro Leches Cake:
The highly acclaimed remix to the traditional Tres Leches. You get an additional element of milk: 4 different milks! This cake graced over the top spot of their separate dessert menu with the distinction: Award Winning. I saw the Unilocal reviews and the cries of joy from having a bite of this cake. It’s aesthetically pleasing with the caramel drizzle… BUT ITS DRY. This is not some kind of regional dialect or the product of modern day slang. The cake was LITERALLY DRY.
Tres Leches cakes are usually somewhere on the range of moist to wet to soaked. The Cuatro Leches cake I had was slightly moist, barely making the expected scale. The 4 milks came together to create a masterpiece of milky, creamy flavor. It had a meringue topping that was light, not too sweet, and complimented the lightness of the cake. But the DRY cake emphasized the dense and heavy characteristics that this cake is trying to hide. It was like putting on a tight shirt to make someone look slim; but the person couldn’t breathe because it was so tight and made them look larger. Every bite was a mixed blessing and confused me: I got a masterpiece of flavor with the texture of a biscuit. I thought about each bite, it didn’t send me to cloud 9 or heaven. It was like sitting in Starbucks, thinking about what I will do the rest of the day. I was confused. I really wanted to like it, but… in the end… it was too DRY (–1 star). There was milk on the plate, but not enough to rescue the thirst of the Cuatro Leches.
The Atmosphere:
From the outside looking in, I couldn’t see much else besides patio seating. Good private café for those hangover-​esque afternoons or if you’re looking for much needed weekend relaxation. The inside is amber with tables and booths arranged into columns. Paintings adorn the walls and it feels like you’ve stumbled into a place way beyond your budget.
The Verdict:
La Duni is a complex women, so mysterious, so beautiful, but so confusing. It had strong flavorful moments with the 5-​star worthy Rajas Con Queso Y Carne Asada, but also flavorless moments with the Flautas De Pollo Con Ensalada. The Cuatro Leches Cake was most confusing; near perfect flavor and taste, but DRY. I left wanting more, but was satisfied with what I got. La Duni is peaceful, relaxing, and a great getaway during the weekend. I might come back, but they better have a wet slice of Cuatro Leches cake waiting for me. ³⁄₅ stars.

I’ve always wanted to try this place and glad I finally got to. I came for breakfast with my mom and we both enjoyed it. The restaurant was pretty empty since it was 8am and they just opened but it was pretty cute on the inside. Dim lighting which I love as well. I ordered the Huevos Finos which are poached eggs on a popover and potatoes on the side. Pretty clever in my opinion. It felt very light and I didn’t feel stuffed after I ate it (which is great.)
For my drink, I ordered the French hot chocolate which was delicious. I asked the waitress which one was better between the Latin and French, and she said French. Great pick!
I’m thinking 3.5 stars because I wasn’t really WOW-​ed. It’s not that hard to impress my taste buds but this wasn’t anything special to me. Don’t get me wrong, it tasted good but just not special enough for 4 or even 5 stars. Once again, just my opinion. I don’t think I would return for breakfast/​brunch. Maybe the lunch or dinner menu is better. Their pastries looked pretty yummy too but I didn’t get to try any.

Walked into a kinda nice looking place. Service is not bad, not amazing either. My food could have been wonderful but was just plain. My side condiments were brought in paper bowls :(The Hollandaise was more aioli than sauce.
What got me the most was the irritating fruit flies/​gnats that attacked my area when my food was put down! I know they are pests but this is food establishment. So figure it out!
Their espresso bar is extensive. I still can’t get myself to rave about it.
Additional: 15mins after writing this review and posting it with 3 stars I’m taking a star off for being ignored. Yes I said I was going to work while I ate, but having to ask 4 times for my tab kinda means I was done and ready to leave on a 3hr drive back to Austin.

A good friend brought me here the other day. We were on a mission to do some day drinking. Finally found La Duni tucked away in a small parking lot. We showed up right before the dinner rush, so the service was attentive and pleasant. I like booths because of the intimacy and elevated comfort level. Unfortunately, we barely got through our drink orders before we were attacked by a swarm of gnats… relentless and annoying gnats. They seemed to be more prominent in the booths, although after we moved clear across the restaurant, we saw a few more at the table. Honestly, I was just surprised none of them ended up stuck in our queso.
The queso is green. I’m not afraid of a little color, but I admit it was odd. They graciously explain the reason for this and made it sound even more delicious in the process. (roasted poblanos blended in the mix) You can get it mild or spicy. (Spicy, duh.)
We ordered two specialty sandwiches and split each half. The gaucho chicken breast is refreshing, light, and delicious. The rajas con queso y carne asada apparently caused me to reveal my «oh face» according to my dork of a friend. It’s like the mexican version of a philly cheesesteak, and it is even more flavorful. I was going to go with wheat or gluten free bread but our waitress (& I’m kicking myself for not remembering her name) ranted and raved about the pan de yema bread. It was like Hawaiian rolls on steroids. Sweet, fluffy, and absolutely could be eaten on its own.
I’m a strong believer in happy hours, and I give even more kudos for reverse happy hour! Most of the drinks looked great. I stuck with the mojitos. They gifted me with the most decent buzz. The waitress forgot to remind us happy hour was ending due to our incessant gabbing. About 5 minutes after it ended, we playfully gave her a hard time, but she went out of her way to run an exception by the manager. Excellent customer service.
We’re going back. And I WILL get her name this time!

This Latin American eatery has a menu full of unique dishes that I have never experienced before but now am convinced to return to eat again.
We started with El Jimador cocktails. My dining companion opted for a fresh margarita while I went for something similar but less traditional. I can’t remember the name of the drink (and can’t seem to find it on the website’s menu), but it was incredible. Light, citrusy and limey with mint leaves, it was the most refreshing cocktail I have had in a long time. I am not even a huge tequila drinker but the smoothness of El Jimador combined with the perfectly blend of not too sweet or tangy flavors was incredible.
For food, I got the chicken gringa– a grilled flour tortilla wrap stuffed with grilled chicken breast, goat cheese, spinach, caramelized onions, mozzarella cheese, mashed avocado, and an array of colorful salsas. OMG! So delcious. They give you the option of yucca or sweet potato fries or a side salad. I went for the sweet potato fries which were typical but did not disappoint. My dining partner is Venezuelan and remarked that his meal was so authentic that it tasted like his mom’s cooking. That says a lot. Both of us were very pleased with our meals and service.
Aside from the $ 4 valet charge to park in the lot right by the entrance, I had a great experience here. It is important to note that the valet closes midday at 2:30 and there aren’t may other options to park, so my meeting (and lunch) was rather rushed due to the valet’s constant text alerts that they were about to close down halfway through my meal. The restaurant might want to work out that inconvenient kink, otherwise it was a great experience.

This has to be my favorite spot for brunch in all of Dallas! The food is fresh, the quality is amazing and the service just takes it that extra mile!
This place definitely gets packed and there’s always a wait — have patience young grasshopper — it’s worth every minute. The huevo rancheros and migas are probably the only two items I always seem to migrate back to. They are some of my favorites and it’s hard to «explore» when you’ve already found the good stuff!
It’s a great place to celebrate a special occasion. I’ve celebrated graduations (even my own), to bridal showers to baby showers here. It’s a great place to bring the out of towners who underestimate the yummy food Dallas has to offer and certainly a place you can drink down your mimosas with your gal pals while you gossip over last night’s drama at the club — yeah, I’ve had plenty of those!
You definitely have to come try out brunch — you won’t be disappointed! I can’t wait to come back and pay this place a visit again!

One of my favorite places in this neighborhood. I love their mocha cafes and always get the crispy pork rice salad. Comes with grilled plaintains, guac, rice and salad. I usually don’t order salad unless I come here. If I’m not feeling like a gluttonous pig I can save half of it for lunch the next day too.
Their chips are light and airy and the tres leches cake is delicious.

Great espresso!!! I had a Vaca blanca-​espresso with melted Belgium white chocolate and milk — fantastic! The wait staff was great and the café is very cozy and sophisticated. I has the carnitas y huevos that was extremely tasty. The baked goods looked great but we were too full to try. I could do brunch here every Saturday.

I would only come here for the expresso bar and dessert because of how over priced everything is. The Café Mocha and French hot chocolate are superb.
I’ve had dinner and brunch here before and both were good but nothing special. So why the high prices? They even charge $ 3 extra for substitutions (lots of my friends are vegetarian so that becomes an issue). Add-​ons are pretty pricey as well.
I did enjoy the rice salad with grilled chicken. Pretty unique dish with basmati rice and fried plantains. The brunch chile relleno was good but lacked flavor. The chilaquiles don’t come with eggs so you’d have to add that on. Best part — the papas fritas that come with most dishes. (Comparable to Sweet Maple’s potatoes in San Fran!)