Welcome to the Critical Flavor!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Critical Flavor. I'm Daniel and I find myself far too often driving aimlessly through the streets of Miami looking for "hole in the wall", "mom and pop" restaurants that might be the undiscovered diamond in this city of fast food, impersonal chain restaurants that seem to lurk behind every corner close to home. Don't get me wrong though! There are tons of small restaurants, and sweet food joints around town! But which of these restaurants are worth going and tasting the flavor they offer? That's where I come in. I'm going to go to one new restaurant a week and document my experience on this website. So you no longer have to waste time looking for something new and hoping the quality of your food is substantial. Instead, let's share the food we find with the world and see what happens. This way, if undiscovered restaurants are worthy of the big times, they'll be recognized by the most influential advertisement of our time, WORD OF MOUTH. So follow me from here on out every week to see what new flavor is hidden in this city of diversity!

100 Montaditos Restaurant

100 Montaditos

3253 Buena Vista Avenue, Suite 104
Miami, FL 33137

Point Rating: 9.0/10

I've been to a good amount of food joints in my life time. I have had the pleasure of dining on the floor, eating with my hands, chopsticks, grilling and frying my own food at some locations and even catching my own fish to have served to me. All these styles of a dining experience make your meal entertaining and enjoyable as compared to fast food and sometimes home cooking. 100 Montaditos is one of those restaurants that you tell your friends about when everyone is broke, on a budget, and looking for a good time. And the best part is there are TWO locations in Miami! What is so amazing about this place is the variety of flavors they have to offer, all on their little, tasty, bread rolls that range from salmon and cream cheese, to pulled pork and chipotle to hummus with olives. You'll have fun in this restaurant picking and sharing food with whoever you go with and leave with your hunger TERMINATED! When I visited the location in Midtown, the restaurant was packed. It was so tight, i had to plot a route on the floor to how I would maneuver to the register to place an order. I'd then have to wait to find a table to open up. Can you imagine how aggressive people get over a table to sit down at? The menu is your manual to organizing your restaurant experience into one of the two following goals; "stuff my face till my belt buckle breaks" or a "try every flavor I can even f the mystery meat is throbbing". Either  way the best part is that each montadito ranges from $1.00-$3.00 and can fill you up after being only $7.00 into your meal. I ordered the salmon and cheese, grilled chicken with chipotle, goat cheese and sun-dried tomato pesto, duck mousse with olives, hummus with eggplant, and a cookies and cream to finish off. All these montaditos are PACKED with flavor, it just depends on your tolerance with certain flavors to decide what you order. I personally enjoyed the salmon and cheese and goat cheese with pesto montadito most, and both were made fresh and served with chips to much on as well. So if you want a change of pace and your wallet is as empty as mine, go to 100 Montaditos at either Midtown or Miami Beach, find your way through the crowd and get yourself a couple of bread rolls and see what the hype is all about.

Red

Red - Simply Quality Fast Food

13911 SW 42nd Street
Miami, FL 33175

Point Rating : 7.5/10

Red is an interesting restaurant and definitely caught my attention. First of all, the location is phenomenal. There is a large "RED" logo on the Southern Wall fully exposed to Bird Road which is how I even noticed the restaurant in the first place. Inside is very comfortable. The dining area is ery clean and the atmosphere is close resemblance of the ever so popular Colombian cuisine "Los Perros". The restaurant plays music at a medium level of the light electronic genre that becomes very pleasant the longer you stay inside.  I ordered a very well priced special which includes a portion of churrasco, and two sides which I chose as french fries, rice, and mashed potatoes. Red's BIGGEST downfall is after you order. Their motto is 'Simply, Quality, Fast, Food', but there is absolutely NOTHING fast about this place. Eating alone, my order took approximately 20 minutes before I received it. I twiddled my thumbs, watched tv, heck! I managed to finish a game of sodoku before my meal came out. BUT! Once my food arrived, I started eating. This small restaurant on Bird Road and 139th Avenue is capable of cooking up some DELICIOUS churrasco. I was impressed with how the meat was cooked and tasted. The meat had no raw areas and maintained a moist, flavorful taste that shocked me where I sat. The following sentence is not an exaggeration. I did not use a knife to cut the steak. The meat was tender enough to cut with my teeth, (and i don't mean ripping apart like stray dog). The fries, rice and mashed potatoes were all very good but seemed to be unimportant when you have an 8"x2"x0.5" steak dominating your plate. Their prices are very good and the dining area is entertaining enough to recommend this place to anyone who enjoys good food at a great price.

Pasapoga Restaurant

Pasapoga Restaurant

15725 SW 72nd Street
Miami, FL 33193

Point Rating : 4.5/10

Pasapoga is a rather mid size strip mall restaurant/bakery in the newly developed western area of West Kendall. The location is cute and has a surprisingly high Cuban feel to it which becomes more difficult to stumble upon the farther away from Hialeah you go. That being said, I ordered their "Pasapoga Special" which stood out to me to be their signature sandwich. I mean why else would you put your name on the sandwich? The service was kind and very speedy with my order. But let's talk about what really matter here; the food. I gotta say for being Cuban food, they lack no culture to their flavor. However, Pasapoga Restaurant does not dazzle your taste buds. I felt their quality of food matches that of other Cuban restaurants. Were looking for a place that stands out, and their "Pasapoga Special" is basically a Miami Sandwich you can find at any Cuban bakery in Miami-Dade with sliced chorizo ("sausage" for my non-spanish readers) added in the middle. I can't blame them for not standing out though. In Miami, where probably over 50% of residents only speak Spanish, Cuban food is as real as it gets. It's hard for a restaurant to surpass what's pretty much been perfected in Miami-Dade. Anyways, for dessert I ordered their "Flan de Leche", and unfortunately though the custard was delicious, the caramelized syrup was bitter. The bitter taste usually occurs when whoever is preparing the flan overcooks the caramel and in a sense burns it, so that being said I was not at all impressed with the cooking of this place; (plus it sucks driving home with a bad after taste). So if I lived in the area and starving with nothing to eat, sure, I'd consider grabbing a bite to eat at Pasapoga Restaurant. However, in the occasion that I'm driving around with friends or family and we are deciding what to eat, I'd think twice about mentioning Pasapoga to anyone unless they are prepared to not be dazzled.