Sabor Cubano

I just realized I rated 3 stars, should have been 2 stars.
Great food, terrible service.

if i could give a negative review i would.
place over charged me $ 1000.00 on credit card.
as others have said, owner is never available.
will be filing a police report. this place is up to absolutely no good.

I’m other user affected with the robbery attempt from Mr. Peter, manager of Sabor Cubano. I won’t even refer to the food because the cook and some employees are probably innocent parties in this scam (Food is barely ok). Just as other customers, I paid a $ 45 check with my debit card and when I verified the transaction I found out than $ 540 were deducted from my account. I’ve also tried calling Peter, the Manager, contacting him through Facebook but his silence is insulting.
Please refrain from eating here, we don’t want dishonest people like this in Chicago.

FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!
Read the below reviews. I went in for a sandwich, WAS CHARGED $ 1,300 on my credit card!!! I just read all the reviews below and I searched my bank statement for everytime I ate there and found ANOTHER ONE for $ 151 for a damn sandwich!!!
Phone number disconnected! Someone needs to be arrested. This place is a freaking scam. DO NOT EAT HERE!!! I am reporting them to the police.

Food not good. Two of my friends and I ate here Jan 23. I paid with my credit card $ 72. Two days later I was notified my account was charged $ 793.10. It has been a hassle to get it reversed. The owner/​manager will is «never» available to answer the phone. This issue is not resolved.
Do not eat here. If you do make a purchase, use cash only.
BTW this is the only time I’ve posted on Unilocal for any matter. I’m very tolerable of customer service but this place is ridiculous.
I hope it leaves Lakeview asap.

I returned to give this place another chance. But again, I tried to overlook the serious issues with customer service because the food was actually pretty good. It still takes forever to even be acknowledged and to have your order taken. They also don’t let you know that there is a cork fee.
BE WARNED: Check your statement if you use your debit/​credit card. My $ 50 meal turned into a $ 700 deduction from my checking account. I called the manager, but he never returned my phone call after I left a vm detailing my situation. Luckily, my bank was great with turning around a quick investigation and returning my money. But this is more than just a simple input error if this is affecting multiple people.
Because of this, I will never go back and will warn all my friends and family to stay away! I can find good Cuban food elsewhere…

I was craving a Cuban sandwich for lunch one day and stumbled upon this place in my Unilocal search.
I went in for a late lunch and was the only patron but it was one of those hellishly lcd days we recently had. I wanted some tropical reprieve.
I requested the medianoche sandwich — basically a Cuban on sweet bread but the server advised they were not done preparing that bread so I happily ordered the Cuban instead.
I wanted a refreshing jupiña with my meal but they were out. I believe I got a can of diet soda with no ice, no refill, for $ 2.75 instead!!! It’s like I’m really in Cuba now.
The Cuban sandwich comes with fries but you can sub a chicken soup or a black bean soup. I got the fries and a black bean soup and the fries were ok but the soup was great.
Cuban was exactly how It should be.
3 stars for basically not having it 100% together.
I will happily go again and get the Cuban & bb soup on a take out basis.

DO NOT GO HERE!!!
Like previous Unilocalers, I too was ridiculously overcharged for my meal — a $ 44.00 credit card charge somehow turned up as a $ 687.00 charge on my debit card. I was pissed when I found out and called to speak to the manager who did not return my call. Because it was a credit card tied to my checking account, and I did not get a call back as promised, I quickly called my bank the next day to place a dispute. The bank was great — they credited the amount while they researched it, but I had to get a new debit card at a bank branch. The restaurant NEVER CALLED ME BACK!
There is something very fishy going on with this restaurant. If you read other Unilocalers reviews, it seems like the restaurant has an «overcharge» problem.
Oh and the food… nothing special. I’ve tried other Cuban restaurants in Chicago and Miami and you’re not missing a thing. Definitely not worth the risk of getting charged 15 times the actual bill!!!
Consider yourself warned!

Nice décor. Felt very «Miami» on a brutal winter’s night.
Decent food… had the Fricase de Pollo dinner. Good spice but not to hot to the accompanying tomato stew. Friend had a Cubano sandwich and said it was good. It’s a large sandwich by the way and can easily be split.
Slow and inexperienced service.
Would return.

I cannot possibly think of reasons why this place will get ratings below 4 stars. If you disagree you obviously don’t understand Hispanic cuisine and service.
1) I’m not a fan of tostones, that said these guys make such great garlic sauce that the tostones come out full of flavors. Their jibarito is a must try.
2) Café con leche. It’s definitely the best one I’ve had in the city, probably the entire country, may my grandmother never read this. Have a guava and cheese pastel with it.
3) Their sandwiches are big and filling, with the ropa vieja being my favorite. The jibarito and the Habana steak are really good too, with the latter one being their biggest sandwich. Their fries are delicious, but not addicting. However, you should be looking at their dinner menu.
4) Get the arroz con gandules and platanos maduros or tostones as your sides. The masa de puerco is incredibly tender and juicy, with a delicious garlic touch. The lechon is much better as a dinner than a sandwich, totally worth it. The oxtail was fabulous but it’s just annoying to get through the bones. Ropa vieja is another winner.
5) Must have their flan. Their guava cascos are okay.
6) Service is as it usually is with Hispanics, which means you can have a really pleasant conversation with your waiter/​waitress and crack some jokes with them by the end of the night. That said, their atmosphere is fabulous for a Hispanic place; it blows my mind. Their music is never missing the queen and kings of salsa.
You want to come here.

I’ve been to this place about 15 times since it opened. The food is fantastic and authentic. The staff is very nice and friendly. I highly recommend it.
It’s a breath of fresh air to have a Caribbean restaurant join the ranks of the abundant Asian and Mexican restaurants in the area.

Remember the cool dissections we did in biology class? Like, when we’d pop open a spinal column and see the lil sliver of spinal cord running up the middle? That’s what I thought of when I had the chicken tamale appetizer here.
This tamale – I posted a pic in the gallery – had a tiny string of chicken running down the middle of a 2-​inch thick block of baked corn meal.
I was quite concerned about what the entrees would be like.
Thankfully, I can report that they weren’t bad. Black beans were flavorful as was the generous rice serving.
My main dish this day was one of their steaks, which is a thin, but wide piece of beef that packed lots of flavor. Topped with cooked onions and garlic, it was pretty good. While it was certainly not a piece of prime ribeye, I thought it was freakin’ delish.
Will I go back? Honestly? Probably not. And that’s too bad, because – as the Unilocal!cliché goes – I really wanted to like this place.

YUM! My boyfriend and I were actually on our way to another restaurant near this place, but when we found out the other place had an hour wait, we decided to try here. I don’t remember the specific names of what we ordered, but I had this kind of pulled pork dish (something lechon?) and my boyfriend had a beef dish (sorry I wish I could be more specific!). Both were delicious! This is my third time having Cuban food, so I’m not really sure how authentic it was, but boy was it good! I ordered the smashed plantains, but those didn’t have too much flavor. My boyfriend had the fried bananas, which I enjoyed much more. This place is BYOB, and we brought red wine, which made our dinner that much better. We left thoroughly satisfied and incredibly full. I would recommend this!

What? A taste of home just a few blocks away? HORRAY!
Well, sorry to say… not that exciting! =(
I grew up eating cuban and puerto rican food, so I know authentic when I taste it. This place, not so much. It has hits and miss.
You get there, there’s ONE host and he spends most of his time in the kitchen or someplace else BUT the entrance. So be prepared to wait at least 5 – 10 mins just for him to write down your name.
This place is still fresh so it gets busy and there’s no waiting area so you are just left standing in the dining area. Kinda weird!
When we finally sat down, our waiter took a while to even get us our menus. When we were ready to order, one in our party was undecided in what to order so the waiter just started making faces because he became annoyed. You would think a waiter would make suggestions, he kept shrugging his shoulders when someone would ask what he thought of a certain food.
I ordered Ropa Vieja and the meat what way over cooked that it started to make my teeth hurt while trying to chew it. Ended up leaving it. Someone ordered the whole Red Snapper and it was tasteless. I think they don’t even season it. Another person ordered the Carnitas and that was actually pretty tasty and tender. And the TOSTONES… the BEST part about cuban/​puerto rican food… tasted old! You can clearly tell they were frozen. Any dish that involves plantains needs to be FRESHLY made. Plaintains should never be frozen because they lose consistency. Everything else was ok.
Opening a Cuban restaurant in Lakeview is a GREAT idea but there is still work to be done. I think the owner was there that night and he was the sweetest person there. This place has a TON of potential.
Please hire better service and have a true cuban cook your dishes! Everything else can be manageable if the service and taste is there!

Lechon close to home? Finally! I no longer need to drive north or west to get my fix. Happiness.
Where is the love people? The lechon here is too good and incredibly flavorful! Loved the bread the sandwich was served on, too, as it was crispy and garlic-​y. Sandwiches ($ 7 or $ 8) are served with fries, but I was able to substitute yellow rice. I wasn’t necessarily a fan of the rice, but the bf’s black beans and white rice was good.
Other dishes seem pricey (like the empanadas and dinner entrees), but sandwiches and breakfast items are priced well, considering how much food you get!
In the mood for flan? Try it here! It’s soo good here. Great way to end a meal! Our waitress was also super sweet. We’ll be back for that guava and cheese empanada.

I’m going to preface this by saying that we went to Sabor Cubano a few days after it opened, so I’m willing to give it another shot.
The service left a lot to be desired, ie, it took at least ten minutes for our table to be approached and then it took the waitress took so long to bring us glasses with ice for our sangria that we brought, so we ended up downing our waters and pouring the sangria in those glasses.
The tostones, as noted in another review, were abysmal. Cold, hard, tasteless. I’ve made better frozen ones.
My husband’s bistec empanizado was entirely too breaded, and cold in the middle.
Like I said, I’ll try it again, but I’ll probably stick to 90 Miles for my Cuban food.

Service: Terrible
Food: Acceptable
The food was decent but nothing exceptional. I can find a similar Cuban sandwich or an Empanada throughout the city. The worst part of the restaurant was the service. We arrived at 1:15PM and it took the waiter 15 minutes to come back and take our order. After ordering and waiting 20 minutes, I politely asked the server if and when our appetizer was arriving to which he replied, «he is working on it». It took another 10 minutes for the appetizer to arrive (30 minutes since ordering, 45 minutes since sitting down).
I would not recommend this restaurant. Try another Cuban joint that will provide the same quality of food, faster.

Maybe I have been spoiled by friends who cook really really really good Puerto Rican and Cuban cuisine but I cannot find a good tostone in this city. So why not give this restaurant a try? It couldn’t get any worse, right? Wrong. Rock hard and flavorless. Tasted like eating feet. Maybe I am wrong. I guess I just don’t like eating rocks. Maybe this is what Cuban food is supposed to be like. It’s not you, Cuban food, it is me. Seriously, I am really frustrated. I know this is a first world problem, but it is becoming a real problem. Maybe I will just pay my friends to make good tostones… Buuuuut, I digress.
Cuban sandwich made with ham that looked like the ends of the deli meet that you buy at Tony’s. Seriously, it was so gross I wouldn’t even feed it to my dog. The bread was so hard I could have used it as a weapon.
A sandwich and my friends entrée, $ 25. For disgustingness. Fool me once…

The restaurant is very small; however, we called ahead and were able to be seated right when we arrived.
The service was very slow and not that good overall. The waiter didn’t seem to be able to understand us very well when we asked about items. There seemed to be 2 waiters running around hurriedly and several people who looked like they worked there just standing in the corner, overseeing things, I guess. The waiter forgot to put our order in, so we ended up spending 1.5 hours to complete our meal. No one, besides the waiter, came to our table to apologize for the mistake and long delay.
The ambiance, furniture and menu make this seem like it is more of a lunch place or a quick service type of restaurant. Half of the menu items were sandwiches. The menu was written poorly as they randomly listed items in English or in Spanish. For example, there were «fried bananas» and «Tostones» on the menu. Each item is a fried plaintain, prepared differently. There was also «White Rice with Black Beans» and «Arroz con Gandules» listed.
The food was good, but the service was so slow that I don’t know if I will be going back on a busy night again.

I really wanted to like this place. My mother and I come here for a late lunch. We ordered the Cuban Platter, a medianoche and a steak sandwich.
Our sandwiches came out before the Cuban Platter and with cold french fries. We asked the waitress what happened to our appetizers and her response was «oh the sandwiches are faster to make and the appetizers take longer». Okay, well then make the sandwiches after the appetizers platter comes out, pretty easy.
My steak sandwich was okay, my mom’s Medianoche was pretty average. The croquetas were probably my favorite part of the meal.
Overall, I was expecting really good Cuban food but instead received mediocre service and lukewarm average food.
Hopefully this place gets its act together otherwise it won’t be lasting long on Broadway.