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By WILMA NORTON, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 1, 2000
The menu for Flower's says the restaurant serves home-cooked Cuban food made fresh daily by Cubans. A friend tells me it is the best Cuban food he has eaten since leaving Miami.
I'm no expert on Cuban cuisine, so I can't vouch for his claim, but I can say that the lunch we got from Flower's was delicious and more than ample. The three of us shared one meal and a sandwich and still had enough left over for my husband's dinner that night.
We cut the 12-inch roast pork sandwich ($2.95) into thirds so that everyone could get a taste. It was simple: roast pork chunks on wide, crusty Cuban bread. There were no condiments, but the pork didn't need any. It was juicy and tender with a hint of garlic.
The Cuban meatloaf ($4.85) was made with whole green olives inside. There were three or four thick slices, covered with a vinegary tomato sauce that included sauteed onions, red peppers, garlic and more olives. We liked the tangy sauce and the meatloaf a lot. Our only complaint was that all those olives made it a bit salty for our taste.
The black beans and yellow rice came with slices of pimiento on top and minced onions. We were charged an additional $1 because I asked for extra rice.
Flower's doesn't have an extensive menu, and everything on it may not be available every day. They were out of the potatoes and beef with yellow rice and black beans ($4.85), for example, the day I was there.
All entrees come with Cuban bread. They include black beans and yellow rice for $4.25, chicken and yellow rice for $4.25, potatoes and chicken with black beans and yellow rice for $4.85 and ropa vieja (shredded roast beef) with black beans and yellow rice for $4.85.
There are four sandwiches besides the one we got: Cuban ($2.95), Cuban sirloin steak ($4.25), Cuban turkey ($2.95) and Cuban vegetarian ($2.50). A bowl of black bean soup with bread is $1.95, and tamales Cubanos is $2.05.
I called ahead and asked if the food could be ready in about 15 minutes. It was waiting when I arrived. Flower's is in a strip center on the southeast corner of 66th Street and 70th Avenue, along with a bar, pawn shop, Domino's pizza and a consignment shop. The parking spaces are angled so that the best entrance is from 70th Avenue. There isn't a lot of parking in front of the restaurant because some of the spaces are for Domino's customers only, but there is space around back.
Flower's has a few tables inside, and the restaurant is smoke-free. Our food was packaged tightly, with the meatloaf and all the black beans and yellow rice in one container. The sandwich was wrapped in paper, and the Cuban bread came toasted and buttered, stapled inside two small brown bags.
The package also contained two small Christian comic books, and the staff wished us "a glorious weekend" as we left with our food.