Gustazo Cuban Kitchen & Bar

Puerco Asado (7/10): Huge dish. Tons of meat, very filling. Great bang for your buck. Meat is slightly on the dry side, but still decently tender. I would only order this if you have a large party, though. You really want to try all of the different tapas here!I've ranked the tapas from favorite to least favorite below:Yuca Frita (10/10): These are so freaking delicious, wow. The cilantro aioli was an amazing dipping sauce. They really are fried to perfection.Frituras de Maiz: (10/10): Wow, these fritters are also amazing. They come with such a rich sauce. The fritters are exploding with flavor.Chicharrones (9.5/10): Melt in your mouth pork belly. The pork skin crust was perfect. The sauces really make most of the dishes here. This dish is no different - I loved the sauce.Empanada del Carne (9/10): Oh man, the crusts are so good. This is pretty on par with the ones I just had in Puerto Rico. Chuletas de Cordero (8/10): The seasoning is heavenly. I was licking the lamb chops clean. Costillas a la Guayaba (7.5/10): Really nicely marinated, and the rib meat is so tender that it almost falls off the bone. Maduros con Tocino (7/10): This dish was pretty good, but got overshadowed by the other ones.Camarones a la Plancha (7/10): Solid dish, but I enjoyed some other ones even more.Ensalada de Aguacate y Pina (6/10): The salad was a bit too sour, and that sourness overpowered the dish. It was a great blend of ingredients, though.*** and one dessert ***Churros con Chocolate (9/10): Big crunchy fluffy churros!! The chocolate sauce is amazing (not really spicy at all). You have to get this for dessert!!***Service can be a little slow, even when the dinner rush is dying down. Ambiance is great - lots of seating, both indoor and out door.

The staff was nice and friendly. They are a little under staffed because there was only one bartender serving lots of people dining at the bar. He was doing great though. We tried almost all of their vegetarian options in small and big plates. I loved their yuca fritas and mushroom croquettes. Empanadas was slightly sour don't know why but overall ok.

I've been here on two separate occasions and both times were delicious. The restaurant itself is huge with lots of seating. They used to offer outdoor seating during the summer time which was really nice. I'm not sure if that's available anymore. However, the ambiance inside the restaurant is great for a nice dinner out. We were a table of 3 and we ordered 6 small plates. For a few of the dishes ordered, typically their are only 2 pieces but the waiter offered to bring 3 so all of us could have a piece. I loved that they offered that so we didn't have to worry about splitting the food equally. We ended up adding in an extra taco and empanada so that each one of us could have one. The flavors of all the dishes were excellent! We ordered the queso fresco, mussels, croquettes, ribs, short rib taco and empanadas. I would recommend all of them!

Food and ambiance were fantastic. Service lacked a tiny bit but the food, beer, and cocktail list made up for it.

A friend suggested this place for dinner before an event we went to in Waltham. The food here was very delicious. We went with the tapas style and ordered several small plates. They also have large plate options. We enjoyed everything we ordered. The space is really big, so likely not too much to get a reservation.Our server was nice and able to answer questions about the menu items. Will certainly go back and try some more things on the menu.

We enjoyed our dinner here. The plates are quite small and you need to order a lot of them to fill up. We had a reservation and we were sat on time.

We came to Gustazo for dinner this past week, and I'm glad we did! It was a last-minute choice to come and there were no available reservations, but we found space at the bar.When you walk into the space, there's a nice dining room with closely packed tables and a front bar. If you head on toward the back, there is another dining room with another bar--we chose the front bar as it was a bit quieter. On the wall in the front dining room, there's a cool art piece of Cuba.Our server/bartender was friendly and gave us menus right away. We had the yuca frita, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I had the ropa vieja as my entree, for which the beef was tender. Everything in the dish went together quite well, and I was happy to see that the beef was more flavorful than some other local places that serve ropa vieja.I ordered the Cuban Cigar cocktail (after consulting with the bartender to see if it was Scotch-forward, which it wasn't). It was a complex, enjoyable cocktail that had much more rum flavor than scotch--this one's definitely a sipper. Gustazo is great to have on Moody Street, and I'll have to try the Cambridge location next!

Really love the food. The ambiance is really Cuban cool. I honestly came here reading the reviews of fellow yelpers so sure enough they weren't wrong. When we arrived we were seated but our server was nowhere to be found until I actually grabbed the GM who was very gracious enough to take care of us. So with that said it doesn't get a perfect five but if we were looked after it would have been well over five stars..Amazing lamb chops chicharrino's, porkribs, shrimp and tres leches. You must come here!!!

I've tried almost everything on the menu and never disappointed. The guava mojito and gin cocktails are to die for! Love the maduros here. The waiters are always quick to bring the plates and the staff is always helpful. Love the Havana vibes.

This is a long overdue review. When I tell you how I was so excited to actually try Gustazo's because every person I knew had been hyping it up for the Cuban food, I was actually so disappointed! First and foremost, I had reservations set prior to dining in. When I got to the restaurant, there were no other customers standing by the host stand. We got sat fairly quickly and it did not look like a busy night at all, especially considering we sat in an empty section in the back. What set me off was our server Lila M's attitude and her low attention for service. I was so upset because she paid us no attention to be served. We needed to ask questions about the menu and she made us feel like we were dumb for asking questions when it was our first time dining in. To top it off, she did not check up on us at all, assuming we didn't need anything. The people who helped the most were actually the food runners and host that night, and that wasn't their job. Our host actually was the one who took our order too! What was also upsetting was we saw our food get taken to a different party's table and they just brought it over to our table afterward. Our food was so cold, and you can actually see that with the fat of the Costillas a La Guayba... We addressed our concerns to our server Lila and she rolled her eyes at us.I don't think I'm a needy customer at all, especially because I was not expecting something to be discounted or lowered on our bill. We just seriously wanted better service and hot food! Like I mentioned at the beginning of this, I was really excited to try this place but left absolutely upset & disappointed.