Few places provide nicer settings to enjoy the beautiful September weather in Charlottesville than the Downtown Mall. Packed with a diverse sampling of bars, pizzerias, bistros, delis and fine dining establishments, the Mall is home to restaurants for any occasion. If you're looking for a simple, chic place to eat but not feeling particularly flush, check out what is perhaps the Downtown Mall's most thriving restaurant trend -- its café scene.
The Mall's cafés all serve coffee, of course, but beyond that, anything is fair game, and every coffeehouse has its own specialty.
One of the most unique -- and visible -- options is Café Cubano. On the south end of the Downtown Mall (next door to Marco & Luca's dumpling shop), Café Cubano is a prime venue for people-watching. It specializes in Cuban-style but locally-grown coffee. What sets Café Cubano apart, however, is its relatively extensive breakfast, lunch and dinner offerings, an interesting selection of food to accompany the requisite coffee.
Subdued interior decoration, dim lighting, breezy music and low-hanging blue lanterns combine to create the classically cool café ambiance, although some of the baristas seem "cool" to the point of verging on unprofessional disinterest. But because location is Café Cubano's strongest suit, take advantage of the outdoor patio, which is as casual and minimalist as they come but perfectly adequate for taking in the downtown scene.
Café Cubano is known primarily for its lunch menu, which consists of soups, salads, sandwiches and paninis. While the soup du jour changes on a regular basis, the black bean soup is a disappointingly boring cup of beans and, apparently, little else. Some herbs or meat-flavoring could easily spice up this bland concoction.
Café Cubano doesn't yield any surprises in the salad department, either, although the chicken Caesar is much tastier than the soup, with plenty of herby chicken. The spring mix which forms the base of the Michael's Greens salad, moreover, is nicely enhanced by its sweet, chunky lime dressing.
The panini's popularity in contemporary American eateries could be likened to the current wrap trend (which should be on its way out, hopefully any day now
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
