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| - I will admit that General Mills did a good thing by spinning off its restaurants into Darden Restaurants in the mid 1990's quality and innovativeness has gone up across the board. So I was expecting good things from a chain restaurant.
The chain creates is one of the nicest casual dining ambiances that I have been into lately. The Beech house concept with wrap around porch, live music, fire pits, etc was beautifully done.
The biggest complaint I had was their Mojito - having lived in Florida for several years I have had many Mojito's and there's was not very good. First of all they get compliments for using spearmint - too many bars use mint, but spearmint is much closer to yerba Buena that is used in Cuba. A true mojito is actually complex drink with sweetness, a slight sourness, and mint. There's was a shallow one-dimensional drink with very little mint. It also appeared that the mine was simply placed in the glass, I could see no crushing (muddling) of the leaves that release the oils for flavor.
The Cuban black bean soup was very good albeit just slightly on the salty side and the West Indies Beef patties were excellent.
I had the Jamiccan grilled chicken breast for my entrée, it was suppose to have jerk seasoning on it but I couldn't taste any. The picture on the website shows 2 chicken breasts and yet my plate only had one on it. The cook who grilled did a very nice job, perfect marks and it was done perfectly, not overcooked one bit. The pineapple mango salsa was pretty plain and needs some work. Green beans were cooked nicely but greasy. And I really enjoyed the cinnamon mashed sweet potatoes.
For a chain the food was pretty good, however very pricy imho. Would I go back, yes, for convenience, different style of food and the atmosphere.
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