"The light before the restaurant is always the longest"

You can't go to Miami and not eat Cuban food. 

So for dinner on the second night rather than using an anonymous source like UrbanDaddy G went another technological route and posed this question to his friends on Facebook:

Where is the best place in Miami to get Cuban food. Not fancy, just the best?

Everyone had the same answer: El Palacio De Los Jugos.

After waiting an absurdly long time for the valet at the hotel to bring our car (we couldn't quite get over the fact that the hotel employed 1 valet at a time and the man had one arm in a sling. OK not only did one guy have an arm in a sling but a second valet did too. Where do you fin two valets with arms in slings??) we got in and took off on a quest for good Cuban food.

As is becoming the norm for us we didn't exactly take the most direct or fastest route, but just when we had the place in sight we were stopped at a traffic light. Stomachs growling and hunger crankiness starting to set in G pronounced: "the light before the restaurant is always the longest". I guess it was the Christmas Eve effect.

Once we got out of the car we knew we were in the right place. For one thing - we were the only non-Cuban people there and there were tons of people there. And for another - everything looked and smelled delicious. 

El Palacio De Los Jugos is a market with a number of different stalls. Some had hot food or sandwiches others had groceries and still others were making fresh fruit juices to order. 

Our first order of business: a refreshing beverage. And when in Cuba... so we got in line for coconut water. Well, more precisely, a coconut that had been hacked open and a straw inserted. I only wish I had a photo of me with my coconut. But alas, we were too focused on food to bother with photos.

Decision making time - what to eat? After surveying our options, we settled on the same thing: Pollo Asado with rice and fried yuca.

We sat down at our picnic table and started in on our gigantic plates of food. 

We barely spoke while we were eating.

The rice (with big peices of chicken, peppers and peas) and yuca were phenomenal. The chicken was good, although not quite a juicy as we would have preferred.

I couldn't even come close to finishing everything. I realize now my fatal mistake. I started with the rice. I shoveled so much rice into my mouth from the start that the chicken had no hope. 

We left there both saying that we felt pregnant from food and that we might burst. 

This was definitely one night that we would have to walk our meal off before even considering any other plans for the night!