Larios on the Beach

01/07/09

Food is ok but keep your credit card receipt!

by pbalk at Citysearch

The food was alright but look out! Make sure you take your credit card receipt and keep it! Unfortuantely I did not keep mine. Otherwise I could call my credit card company and complain about our waiter at Bongos who changed my tip from 20% to 40%!!!

12/19/08

BEWARE, UNSANITARY THEY NEED OT BE SHUT DOWN!!!

by zonin222 at Citysearch

Was in Miami before setting off for a cruise for our honeymoon. the day before we set off, we decide for lack of a better option to eat at Larios or Bongos or whatever its called. i heard that it was gloria estefan's restaurant, and couldnt decide wether that was a good thing or a bad thing. anyway, i dont know where to start. for starters the service was horrible. rude, impatient, and ignorant. the food was FUNKY. ceviche was luke warm and seemed like it had been sitting out. had an extremely gamey smell and even worse taste. when i tried to return it the waiter gave me a problem and i had to argue to even get it taken off my table. then the drinks came, watery, disgusting. for a supposedly "authentic" restaurant, they had by far the worst drinks i had in all of south beach. next the entree, the worst paella ive ever had, full of frozen seafood and a very strong weird seasoning that seemed like it was in there by mistake, and of course all this after waiting for 45 min to have it cooked. next my wife gets here disgusting 5 lb plate of pork that is absurdly portioned, especially considering that it is HORRIBLE tasting and seemingly was plated for an hour before being served. and the cherry on top is that within an hour after leaving, we both felt overcome with nauseau, and spent the next 48 hours throwing up and worse, much worse unfortunately. we had to delay our entire honeymoon by 3 days to recover, and still wasnt 100% after that. its ironic, because if you look at the shape of the menu it looks like a bongo on one side, and the other side that is plain white looks EXACTLY like a toilet seat up, which is EXACTLY what youll be looking into shortly after you eat here. look at the other reviews, how is this the only restaurant where 1/4 of the reviews complain of some kind of neaseau? SHUT THIS PLACE DOWN ITS DISGUSTING, UNSANITARY, AND AN ABSOLUTE JOKE OF A CUBAN RESTAURANT!!!! thought i'de share so you can avoid making the same mistake we did.

• Pros: on southe beach
• Cons: horrible overall experience

02/15/08

Hmmmm Delicious!

by PrttyLady25 at Citysearch

In all honesty, some of these reviews are years old thus making the restaurant look bad. I went last year '07 in August with my then Fiancee after we took our engagement pictures (my 2nd time there, my fiance's 1st) and we both had a great time. Our waiter, was very prompt and fast in getting our appetizers along with drinks to us. The food was very tasty and as anyone knows Cubans cook with lots of spices making our food a delicacy to US. For those faint of heart or not used to Caribbean meals as such might not like it. The music was very nice although I must admit TOO LOUD but we enjoyed ourselves in our celebration. As a matter of fact for our post V-day we're going tonight as husband and wife!

• Pros: Location, Food, Ambience
• Cons: Music a bit too loud to be able to talk over dinner