A Restaurant Review of La Conguita in Jersey City, NJ

La Conguita is a quaint Cuban based restaurant located in Jersey City, NJ. Complete with ceiling fans and warm lighting, the interior of the restaurant is clean and semi-trendy, something almost reminiscent of a Panera bread restaurant. Never having tried Cuban before, I was quite curious of how the night would play itself out. In a way, I even figured that this "freshness" I had to the cuisine would give me quite the advantage in judging it. With this in mind, I tried to keep my mind as open as possible throughout the night.

After being seated, my party ordered some tasty empanada appetizers, which were fried dumplings that came with either a beef or chicken stuffing. The empanadas were very tasty with a nice crispy outside and a rich meaty inside. However, they did come out as a bit dry at times.

When it came to ordering the main entrée meal, La Conguita apparently arranges a majority of their dinner entrée menu on the basis of "daily specials", where only certain entrees are available on certain days. Though, this tactic does encourage customers to sample a wider variety of the restaurant's dishes over various seatings, this can be an easy negative especially if one wants to try a dish that is only available on a certain day.

Anyway, the day that my party and I were dining in was Saturday and I was told that the Pernil or the sliced pork dish, which came with white rice, fried plantains, and black or red beans, was superb. So, after placing the order, my party waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, once the order came, and the first mouthfuls were taken in, the first thing I found was that the Pernil wasn't exactly true to the description of superb. The sliced pork (which was more like boiled shredded pork) was bland and the plain white rice that came with it didn't help. The red beans were hardly seasoned, so if one's looking for a little spice redemption there, there's no chance. The plantains, however, were mildly sweet, which I enjoyed, but, again, the issue of dryness poked its unwanted head into the flavor mosaic.

In addition to all this, there was a minor issue with the environment that became more apparent as the meal progressed. Typically speaking, in terms of most ceiling fans that I've seen, lights would normally be placed beneath the center head of a fan. However, in the room that we were in, not only did the ceiling fans have no lights beneath them, but the lights of the room were all located above the fans, causing a semi-strobe light effect on our food. Though most of my party didn't mind, I, along with another friend of mine, found it both nauseating and distracting at the same time. In fact, it became such a nuisance that I was surprised that no one else in the room suffered a seizure.

But despite all these misfires, the food pricing for dinner was still very affordable (about $5-7 for a daily special dinner entrée) and the quantity that came with it was abundant. So taking in all the detail, La Conguita, displays the following key points:

Pros:

- Very affordable price for a good quantity of food.

- Tasty appetizers for the most part.

- Daily Specials menu encourages the customer to sample a variety of dishes, over the course of a week.

Cons:

- Slow service.

- Bland dishes, with some issues of dryness cropping up every now and then.

- Disorienting environment (strobe effect caused by ceiling fans).

- Daily Specials menu can prevent a customer from ordering a dish that they may want on a certain day.

Though the ceiling fan issue may not be an issue for most people and could be easily remedied depending on the circumstance, the other negative elements of La Conguita did unfortunately clutter the dining experience overall. Because of that, the overall rating of La Conguita adds up to a meager 2 out of 5 stars.

La Conguita is located on 351 Grove Street at Jersey City, NJ.