It was raining on this gloomy Friday, and we wanted to eat somewhere close to Rockafeller. I recalled we had tried to walk into this restaurant on prior days with no success. I looked them up on OpenTable and saw that they had openings throughout the night. We figured it was worth a shot to try to walk in, and we found success. We were seated next to the door inside a glass section of the restaurant towards the front at around 6:30 PM. There was a live trio band playing Cuban style music, and some people dancing near the entrance.

Victor’s Cafe is fairly close to Times Square, but not quite in the Theater District. It’s located on 52nd St near 7th ave, and it has had a steady stream of patrons over the last couple years. What is interesting about this restaurant is that the menu is fairly straight forward, and most of the visitors are people referred by past patrons, including myself. I’m not a fan of Cuban food in general, but this restaurant’s food was surprisingly pleasant.

Summary

This is the first outdoor restaurant experience in the COVID-19 temperament where we had waiter service. We were walking around looking for something to eat with a friend, and this was nestled in a small street with a group of restaurants. It had space and tents set up to span all of their tables. I won’t talk much about the ambiance at this particular restaurant because I loathe eating outdoors in humid NYC heat in the city. So let’s go straight to the food.

Summary

We continue to explore the neighborhood in Long Island City. This street is littered with all sorts of restaurants, and the recent one that got our interest was this Cuban themed restaurant. We were able to walk in without any reservations on a Friday night around 8 PM.

With our meal, we were served bread with a chimichurri variant. The bread was lukewarm and not toasted much at all, but the inside was soft.

Summary

This place has a nice patio and great service. The waitress was very attentive, and the ambiance is definitely very easy-going.

But let’s talk about the food.

The mama margarita I didn’t quite like. It was rather strong and for whatever reason the fruits did not complement well. The pasionfruit caipirinha was not bad, but it wasn’t great. I’ve definitely had better elsewhere in the city. I did think that the drink was made a little strong to my liking.