El Cubo de Cuba

I don’t believe I’ve tried Cuban food before this. Though I’ve had very very similar style food. I don’t think I got the full experience.
I tried the Ropo Vieja with yellow rice. The meat was pretty tasty. There was nothing very spectacular about the yellow rice, you won’t be missing out on anything. Maduros were just the right amount of sweetness. I’m a huge fan of fried plantains. The tostones are on the saltier side. I don’t mind this because I love salt.
I also tried the flan and it was good. Not over the top amazing or anything, but it was too firm nor too soft. It wasn’t too sweet or bitter. Goldilocks would approve.
Bottom line is that this isn’t a place I would crave on the regular. Maybe I’ll pop in once in a couple of months.

The Cuban sandwich and sweet potato tots seem to be the only stand out items on their menu. The bowls and plates are just less tasty versions of what Teote sells.

Wonderful happy hour, and delicious food! El Cubo de Cuba was recommended to me by someone I know from Cuba who told me that the food here is very authentic. Very nice staff here! I have already recommended this place to friends of mine.

I am disappointed by this restaurant every time I go, but I keep going back because I live across the street. The service is always curt and rude (with the one exception being the man who wears the Cuban flag necklace). It’s hard to breathe inside because the smell of burnt oil is overwhelming. The food is over-​priced for what it is (especially the vegan options). And today I got this long, fried hair in my maduros (i will upload a photo). The maduros are pretty good, but I think I might be done.

Consistently AMAZING food!!! I have been here half a dozen times and each time I’ve gotten something different, everything being amazing. Try it! It’s worth the trip!

I got the Havana Bowl and it was really delicious! The sweetness of the mango and plantains works beautifully with the savory flavors of the pork. Also, this place has outdoor seating if you want to bring your fur baby with you like we did!

I would like to say to the owner of this restaurant that if it wasn’t by all of us the consumers you would not have this business
You need to train your employees to treat the customer with attentiveness and smile if they cannot do that think of every customer like a dollar sign .
Food not great but I would not visit or recomend this place.

The food here was amazing. This was the first place I ate at when my friend and I took a trip to Portland and I was not disappointed! I had the Havana bowl with yellow rice and a mojito. The staff was very nice too. The bowl was very flavorful and was the perfect portion. If I did come back to Portland I would definitely come back!

Drinks aren’t the best but pretty good. I would suggest to go with beer or guava colada. The sangria is just okay. But your not coming here for the drinks, although I would expect to get a good mojito. You come here for the food. It’s got great flavor!!! Good quality. The pork is cooked just right. Their bowl is a great deal. We had the Havana bowl. It came with a couple of slice of avocado which was a plus. It’s a very good portion size for the money. The yellow rice should be your choice.
It’s one of those self clean up places. Enough said about that. Good bit of indoor seating. More outdoor seating, picnic table style. Pups allowed in the back which is always a plus for us. You can walk them in from around the back. I think we will definitely be back in the future when I’m craving some Latin style pork.

Dissapointing this trip made possible by a snippy employee
Pros:
=outdoor seating
=good setting
=good parking
=authentic menu
=beverages for all ages
——
Cons this trip…
=mango sauces were not added to the cuban sandwiches.
/​didnt ask why for the below reason
=our bill was $ 40ish with three of us. I ALWAYS tip cash not on card. Husband took my belongings to the patio and left me with his card.
=Male employee working the register made an audible displeased sound when he checked the tip line and i had crossed it out. Again… husband left me with only his card. At this point i was seriously annoyed.
=i was not pleased. You dont treat your customers like that. Again. i always tip CASH.
I went out back and retrieved a good tip, when really i didnt feel the gent needed it as he already had a sour idea about me, the customer. I walked back inside. I waited in line to put it on the counter. Instead of there tip jug. To make a point, dont be rude to your customers or assume anything. We are frequent customers, im not a cheap customer and i always tip for a good meal. After this experience i dont think we will be back for a while.
Ps. We treated our long time friend to lunch her first time here and… This was our wedding anniversary lunch what a memory.
–always a drive to the Hawthorne District from The Columbia River Gorge.

Cool Cuban counter spot in Portland! Food is ³⁄₅ but the price and the vibe are great! Decent beer selection, and they let you write on the walls! Bonus!

The restaurant is cute, but the food is not that great. I give it 3 stars for the atmosphere. We ordered the ropa vieja and mojo pork. Growing up in Puerto Rico and having so many Cuban restaurants and friends, I have eaten great Cuban food. The tostones were dry. Others reviewers recommend the Cuban sandwich. I should have listened!

When I walked in, for an «authentic cuban restaurant», I was not expecting a staff almost entirely of white people and one cuban man. While that is not initially bad, it didn’t sit well for my confidence. We ordered the pork and beef dishes with the tostones and waited in the cute atmosphere. I had mild hopes.
When we got them, I was very quickly disappointed. The rice and beans were bland, the tostones were dry, and the meats were not seasoned with the authentic cuban sauces as described… The meat was either overly seasoned or overly sweet, which is not like food cooked by my family or in many other restaurants of cuban food. I don’t even want to mention the fact that the ice cream we ordered had to be asked for a second time, and even then, it wasn’t until twenty minutes later, when we were leaving, that it came. We did not accept. That bad customer service was absolutely disrespectful.
As a Latina, I feel it is offensive and shameful for a cuban person to call this authentic cuban food. It is his own terrible food.
I might come back to try the flan that is so famous, but I will not be ordering the plates again. Try your luck with the food on your own prerogative…

Last month was my grandmother’s 90^th birthday. Obviously a big deal. Our biggest concern was finding authentic Cuban food that would win the approval of our Cuban grandmother. I had eaten at El Cubo de Cuba a few times, but this event was something different and really, really special.
From start to finish our experience was superb! We ordered the ropa vieja, mojo pork, platanítos, frijoles y arroz. Every dish was delicious!
However, what stood out to us the most was that we were treated like family. Milko, the owner, was so accommodating and helpful, and that meant more to us than anything. It was such an authentic Cuban experience and we were beyond satisfied with our experience. This place is the real deal!

Tried something new to me today.. .Cuban food. I have noticed El Cubo de Cuba’s orange building on Hawthorne Blvd ever since they opened a few years ago, and this was my first time there. The very first item at the top of their menu, the Havana Bowl, looked really good to me, so I ordered that. Slow roasted pork was one of the main ingredients along with choice of rice and beans, avocado, mango, and a couple of other things too. I’m unfamiliar with Cuban cuisine so I actually Googled a couple of the ingredients (maduros and tostones) as I was eating to learn what they were. It was interesting to learn that maduros and tostones are two different ways of preparing plantains as I was nibbling on them. I really liked my Havana Bowl.. .it was impressive with multiple layers of flavors and textures, and it was all good. El Cubo de Cuba’s dining room is colorfully decorated and cheerful. Upbeat Latin music playing in the background added to the enjoyable atmosphere. OK, I’ll probably be a regular there from now on.

Wow I want what I see in the photos! I got the Havana bowl and friend had the chicken bowl, they Comewith one piece of meat, like one small drumstick, a scoop of rice and half scoop of beans, it was good but if you’re hungry you’ll need 2 bowls costing you like 20 for portions you can normally get in a single burrito

Food is really good. Most dishes are authentic cuban food. The restaurant decoration really fits in with portland style and the background music is the real cuban deal. They should start offering bistec de palomilla dish, but in the meantime I can live with the ropa vieja. The only not so good thing ia the guy who takes the order in the register; looks like he almost dont want to be doing what he does. The long face gives a bad impression of the restaurant.

My partner and I ordered take out from this restaurant last night. We were excited to try it as the food sounded great. My boyfriend got the chicken bowl (pollito bowl) and I got the one with pork (havana bowl). I found mine to be a very chintzy portion –I got about 3 bites of pork. My boyfriend however didn’t have even ONE piece of chicken. How they get away with that is beyond me. We got the Caribbean salad which lists mango as the first ingredient however there were only 3 small pieces of mango in it. The salad was mostly cucumber. The sweet potato tots were good, fell apart a bit. The sweet potato fries were AMAZING. The maduros were good. I might go back on a week night to try again (I ordered take out on a fri eve) but looking at the reviews it looks like they are known for small portions. Too bad!

Wow this food is authentic and reasonably priced. Their Cuban Sandwich is NOT greasy at all. I moved from Florida a few years ago and I have been is constant search for amazing Cuban food. This is the place. I have also had Pambiche and their Cuban Sandwich is greasy and Bland their fried Tostones (a cross between a banana and a potato) were also bland and lacked flavor.
Now El Cubo De Cuba has great clean food that is flavorful. The environment inside is fun, colorful and they also play cultural music too. So, if you are looking for great food and a great environment here is the place to eat.

Lovely food and mojito cocktail. I am cuban and I will be back soon! For the tostones beans and pork with mojito :)!!!

Cubo de Cuba is probably 3 star food, but by God, it’s so cheap that it gets a 4^th star. Beyond a few platters, it is your typical bowl food, which is very Portland. Fill a bowl with rice, beans, meat, plantains, and there you go. It is simple, something you could make at home for a dollar, but a $ 7 meal out is hard to beat nowadays in this town. Of course, there’s the tip creep. And it is a creep. You order at the counter, and indeed they bring the food to your table, but that’s the extent of your experience with the staff. You’re on your own for water. And there are annoying signs posted all around instructing you to bus your own table. So, tip for what? This is one of those places with graffiti over all the walls, which offers a quaint snapshot of Southeast Portland. Another thing to love is that Cubo has its own parking lot. Maybe that should earn it a 5^th star?

I’ve been 3x and thoroughly enjoy their Ropita bowl. It’s packed with flavor and has multiple layers of food: rice, beans, plantains, shredded beef, avocado, and mangoes. The service can be slow at times — every time I’ve been there have only been two guys in the back doing all the work, from ordering, to cooking, to bringing out meals. But other than that, it’s a great place!

Tonight was the third time I’ve eaten here and I’ve noticed a theme:
Good food, yet totally overpriced for small, very skimpy portions.
Overpriced for the portion size on both dine in and carry out.

I give this place three stars– It’s average. What I find as a positive is the authentic food. The menu is small but traditional cuban. The problem is, it’s not cooked very well. The maduros were dry and burnt, the rice –meh. Food was slightly higher than luke warm. The pork offered was about the same as any Mexican restaurant in the area.
The restaurant has a cool little courtyard our back. Its uncovered with umbrellas over the tables. Service is walk up, pay/​order, have a seat. Don’t forget to get your silverware before you sit down and bus your table afterwards.
All in all, a decent place for lunch or drinks after work but nothing exceptional.

Awesome little rustic restaurant. Was in Portland for work travel, all my co-​workers wanted to go to Buffalo Wild-​wings, you can do that in any town, so Unilocal to the rescue and I found this place on a pouring down raining day.
What a find, loved it. Clean inside, friendly staff, and fixed my Cuban craving that kicks in now and again after living in South Florida 20 something years ago. I had the Ropa Veija plate with an «Iron Beer» (Cuban soda, a like taste somewhere between cola, root beer, and Dr Pepper — if you like any of those try it, way better than it sounds!). After lunch had some time to loll before heading back to the airport, so ordered a Cuban coffee, more of a Portland coffee shop latte than traditional Cuban coffee but a good cup non the less and enjoyed while watching the heavy rain out the windows.
Worth the effort to go to, inexpensive satisfying meal and drinks.

I was driving down Hawthorne, which is something I rarely do. Seeing an obvious Cuban restaurant I did not know about brightened my day.
I needed to get together with a friend who I have lunch with about once every six months. Funny thing is that the last time we had lunch, we went for Cuban — at Pambiche.
Everything about this place is different. You order at the counter. It is woodsy inside, so it looks like it could be a tavern in a small western town. There might be some Cuban roots in the ownership, but certainly none in who was helping us. I was trying to tie break between ordering ropa vieja and a traditional pork dish, and the younger dude, albeit nice enough, wasn’t able to convey it to me effectively, using the word «earthy» to describe one of the dishes, to which I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles.
For being counter service and for the quantity, it was a little overpriced. The food was slightly bland. Dessert selections were extremely limited. Thankfully, having lunch with someone from the Bronx who never shed their New Yorker personality made it all that much more palatable. I wasn’t expecting to be transported to Havana, but I wasn’t transported out of Hawthorne into a realm of ethnic credibility, either.
It was fine, but all other Cuban restaurants I have experienced have been somewhat to a lot better, hence 2 stars, as in «meh … I’ve experienced better.» It sure doesn’t compare to that honking large tasty combination platter served at the «original» and well known Versailles in Miami’s Calle Ocho neighborhood, using that as a baseline.

I finally tried this place after driving by it for a few years and wanting to eat here. It is a cute place, and the menu has some Cuban basics on it. The food was mediocre. nothing to write home about. I was a little disappointed.
I LOVE cuban food, and Pambiche has been my favorite Portland restaurant for years. I have also had amazing Cuban food in New York. I had the Cuban sandwich and like I said, it was fine, but not very flavorful or interesting. It is cheaper than Pambiche, but I guess sometimes you really do get what you pay for.