My spouse and I dined at El Nuevo Siglo on a Saturday
morning in early July 2016. El Nuevo Siglo is a supermarket and café that is
located in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, on SW 8th Street
(or “Calle Ocho”, which means “Eighth Street” in Spanish) at SW 13th
Avenue. Its name “El Nuevo Siglo”
means “The New Century” in Spanish. It is open daily from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm.
El Nuevo Siglo is
a full-service grocery store, including a butcher counter, pastry counter,
fresh, frozen, and packaged foods, and beverages (both alcoholic and non- alcoholic).
Although our local supermarket sells Goya and other Latin products, we enjoyed
perusing the wider variety of items at El Nuevo Siglo was (for instance, we saw
jarred pacaya palm, frozen tamales, and so on).
You can sit at
the long diner-style lunch counter or at one of the four or five wooden high-top
tables with captain’s chairs (bar stools). The staff cook right in front of the
customer in a no-frills environment.
We ordered the
Cuban sandwich, which was large enough for two people to share. We wish that we
had been hungry enough to try one of the chilled desserts that are displayed in
a refrigerated case atop the lunch counter, because they looked delicious,
although it would have been hard to choose just one from the appealing
selection of panna cotta, tres leches, flan, etc. that were available. Portions
are large, prices are reasonable, the menu is multi-lingual (one side in
Spanish and the other side in English), and daily special dishes are offered.
(We wish that we visited on Sunday, when the special is oxtail.) Staff and
local diners were welcoming– in particular, a regular customer named Santiago
who recommended various dishes to us.
When you are in
Little Havana, stop by El Nuevo Siglo to pick up some Latin products and enjoy
a good meal!
