Picadillo

The next stop on my current block by block challenge was Sophie's Cuban. (Wow, I'm almost a month late on this post.) It wasn't my first time there, but every other time I've gone there, I've gotten the baked chicken sandwich with varying degrees of success. This time, I told myself that I had to try something different for the challenge so I went with picadillo - the ground beef stew - which is one of the Wednesday specials of the day.


Each of the hot meals includes 2 sides. I wasn't sure what sides to get but the guy suggested yellow rice for one so I went with that. I decided to go with the black beans next to it for the "traditional" rice and beans. The only issue was that I didn't realize the "beans"were actually a side of rice and beans mixed together, so I ended up with two sides of rice. Very heavy. Maybe I should have gotten plantains but I wasn't really in the mood for them. There isn't really a vegetable side, which would be nice. The rice/beans and the yellow rice were both fine. I don't remember them being anything extraordinary but just remember that they were heavy.

The stew was pretty good. It had ground beef with onions, peppers, celery, big green olives, and raisins. The raisins were a surprise to me as I wasn't expecting them to be there. They did add a sweetness to the stew to give the flavor some depth which was nice. I'm not a big olive fan but I did try bites of stew with the olives. I just felt like the olives and their sourness overpowered the taste of the stew so I didn't eat all of them. I did, however, use all of my green hot sauce (not pictured) since, as I have mentioned with the sandwich, I love that stuff. I would get the stew again, especially on a cold or rainy day when you just want something hearty and comforting.