Sofrito Latin Cafe

Sofrito Latin Cafe (https://www.sofritocafe.com/) features familiar dishes (and a few more esoteric ones) from eight countries: Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Peru, and Brazil.  It is located at 8607 Palm Parkway, Orlando, FL 32836, in the Lake Buena Vista area near Disney Springs — way out of my usual radius.

Last weekend, however, I met two out-of-state friends there for lunch: a cat-loving badass with his own hardcore/punk/metal record label, Absolute Contempt Records, and his partner, an accomplished and brilliant art history professor.  They were exhausted after a week at Disney World and getting ready for the long drive home, and they wanted some good Cuban food before leaving Orlando, since it isn’t available anywhere in their small college town.  They actually discovered Sofrito, which was close and convenient, but I had never heard of it, since I’m never on that side of town.  It ended up being the perfect place to meet and catch up before they hit the road.

Like many other fast casual establishments have started doing, you order and pay on touchscreens at the front of the restaurant, then your food is delivered to your table.

My one friend has a real sweet tooth, and I was living vicariously through his social media photos of the food they were eating at Disney all week.  He ordered himself a virgin piña colada and a coconut flan, which they brought out before all the rest of our food.  For most, flan is a dessert, but for this dude, flan was an appetizer!

His partner ordered this Cuban pernil sandwich, with roast pork marinated in cilantro-garlic mojo criollo on pressed Cuban bread.  They shared the sandwich and fries, which cost extra.

He ordered himself this Venezuelan arepa de pabellon, a corn patty stuffed with shredded beef (similar to Cuban ropa vieja), black beans, crumbled white cheese, and a sweet plantain, which I write about often enough that my dozens of readers probably know them as maduros by now.

And speaking of sweet plantains, I ordered a unique Venezuelan sandwich for myself: this beautiful patacon de maduro.  Instead of bread, this sandwich of the same shredded beef, white cheese, chopped lettuce, diced tomatoes, and cilantro-garlic sauce was (barely) held together between two flattened and fried sweet plantains!  This was a “knife-and-forker” sandwich for sure; there was no picking it up.
That little ramekin in the photo above is Dijon mustard, which they serve their Cuban sandwiches with.

Here’s an inside view.  I think it could have used far more tomatoes and cilantro-garlic sauce, and some onions would have been nice, but it was still good, and the Dijon help add some necessary acidity and spice to this patacon de maduro.    I am proud to report I got two meals out of this!

Sofrito Latin Cafe had a nice menu with plenty of choices to please anyone, and all the food we tried was solid.  It would be a convenient place to stop into occasionally if it was anywhere near me, but because it is almost an hour away, I don’t know when or if I’ll ever return.  But for anyone who lives on that side of town, or any tourists who dare to venture out of the parks and want an authentic sampling of all the diverse Latin culinary cultures in Orlando, it would be a fantastic destination — affordable, fast, welcoming, and plenty of variety.