Restaurant review: Cantina Cubana, Brussels

Telling foreign acquaintances that you come from London invariably prompts a spontaneous tirade against the expensiveness of London’s restaurants. This is somewhat ironic, given that Brussels is ludicrously pricey when it comes to eating out (balanced, I suppose, by the fact that even someone of moderate means could happily afford to rent a small chateau in the Belgian capital).

Ignoring the price, the food also tends to be fairly hit and miss – although I think this is the understatement of all understatements when it comes to the place we visited on Saturday, the Cantina Cubana.


We stumbled on the place due to my foolish suggestion that we take the scenic route to our intended goal, the pretty good Kika Kitchen. The Cantina had some tasty looking dishes on offer, and so we decided to take the plunge.

Once seated at our table, the evening followed an arcane ritual, which I think that Magritte and his pals would have described as “radical deconstruction of the dining process”:

Drink menu comes – twenty minutes pass – drink order taken – twenty minutes pass – drinks arrive, incorrect drink sent back – five minutes pass – new drink arrives – twenty minutes pass – food menu arrives – twenty minutes pass – food order taken…

Suffice it to say, we were salivating like a pack of feral mongrels on heat when the food finally came, only to find that the long-awaited meal was really rather unpleasant. The so-called African potatoes – a slurry-like concoction of spud and some sort of oil – were particularly rank. My chicken had been baked for so long that it had become fully desiccated, such that one small morsel was capable of sapping all the saliva from your mouth. The best bit, I have to say, was the garnish – a slice of orange.

Being British, we of course ate without complaint, paid and left. That showed them.