La Caridad 78
“Because sometimes you don't want to break the bank while still "eating out on the UWS."”
“La Caridad 78 is truly a New York City Institution and an Upper West Side Tradition!”
“Avocado salad – Ever go to places like Pio Pio or Inka Pollo and order their avocado salads?”
La Caridad 78
Delivery: Yes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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You can tell you are I NYC by the demeanor of the wait or today. No nonsense. Hoping the Cuban food is better than the Chinese my wife and I had last time. The eggplant was very good as was the bok choy. But the brown sauce was not great. Very good spot for people watching on the upper west side though. Today I'm trying the Cuban steak and plantains. It just arrived! Mmmmmmm gooooood! I'll be back!
Awesome spot that I wish I lived closer to. This is the go-to spot when i'm in the neighborhood and want a quick delicious meal. I brought five starving friends here for dinner just recently and La Caridad didn't disappoint. Food was so good that we polished off everything despite over-ordering and left stuffed and happy. Portions are generous for the price and food arrives quickly. A no-frills type of place so don't come expecting romantic ambiance or amazing decor.
Avocado salad – Ever go to places like Pio Pio or Inka Pollo and order their avocado salads? A few thin slices of avocado on top of what is mostly a bed of lettuce with a few tomato pieces mixed in. Well, not here! Order the avocado salad here and you get a plate full of avocado!
beef stew – giant chunks of beef with potato cooked until tender. If you're a beef stew lover then theirs is a must try. Saucy and perfect over rice.
oxtail – Many places are extremely stingy with their oxtail. La caridad gives a solid amount of oxtail and the meat has great flavor. I would definitely order this again from here.
ropa vieja – Another one of my favorite dishes from this place. Moist and flavorful.
Flan – for dessert their flan is awesome
Yellow rice and sweet plantains – always good here and always a must
Arroz con calamares – (calamari with squid ink rice) comes with pieces of squid, sausage(?), and peas and is actually black in color. A must try if you are a fried rice lover as this is an extremely tasty variation.
Broccoli – the side of broccoli is delicious. I know…you're thinking "it's broccoli…whats to rave about broccoli". I thought just that but in an attempt to infuse my very meat and potatoes heavy meal with some additional source of vitamins I ordered a side of broccoli on a whim on one of my visits and it was extremely flavorful and tasty without being smothered in oil or any type of dense unhealthy sauce.
Chinese and Cuban food all in one place? Awesome!
Has a definite divey/diner feel to it, but the food and service were great! Definetly a spot to go if you have several picky eaters. We ordered both Cuban food and Chinese and everyone found something to be happy about.
We ordered:
Pork fried rice – YUM! not too oily, just right!
Plantains – I couldn't stop eating them
Orange chicken – a little on the spicy side, but was good!
Green beans with black bean sauce – an unexpected winner! flavorful!
I love La Caridad. A fusion restaurant mixing Chinese and Cuban cuisine. Very interesting. When I lived in Manhattan many moons ago, I use to order from here all the time. Bueno, Bonito, y Barato. Translation. Good , beautiful, and CHEAP. Go for the pork chops with plantains beans and rice. Or go Chinese. It's all good at La Caridad
Cuban Chinese! Who knew?
Lots of people, as it turns out–this place has been around for decades. Not always full but seemingly never quite empty, I've seen families here, friends, retirees, solo eaters, business folks, etc., often side by side. It's not got much in the way of ambiance, but it's a corner spot walled by glass, so it's bright. Service falls just short of being an afterthought–friendly but abrupt, mostly attentive but only mostly. It's a diner, would be the short way of saying this.
You can get your rice white or yellow, here, but note this is not fusion cuisine–the menu is divided into Chinese and Cuban sections and there doesn't appear to be spillover. The Chinese is familiar (e.g. General Tso's, pepper steak) and the Cuban includes dishes like Ropa Vieja, a stewed, shredded beef with a mild sweet flavor, pretty good with some hot sauce drizzled on it (make sure to ask for the Chinese chili oil). It's not destination dining, but it's solid stuff.
That said, some dishes are much better than others–the General Tso's lunch special is generic, just pucks of white meat lightly fried and sauced, but the roast chicken with rice n' beans looks like home cooking; the veg chow fun is just a massive plate of chewy noodles with a few sad vegetables mixed in, but the sautéed string beans are crispy and savory-sweet. And for dessert, the pudin con leche (pudding) is a large portion and surprisingly light and not too sweet.
(There's a backstory for this hemisphere-spanning menu: Chinese folks who'd settled in Cuba before the ¡revolución! mostly left once it got going. Some of them settled in New York, and some of those were restaurateurs. They opened a number of eateries reflecting their life of immigrant hopscotch.)
Though the menu is mostly focused on meat, this place has become one of my favorites for a vegetarian meal. The options are few but they're unimpeachable. My go-to order for two:
– Bok choy, sauteed and loaded with garlic
– "Mixed" Salad, which is just a load of dry lettuce, topped with tomato, onion, a generous portion of avocado, and a couple of lemon wedges. (It's dry and ought to be a bland nothing of a dish, but something about the crispness and rawness of it all, plus the abundance of avocado, makes it refreshing.)
– Yellow rice n' beans
It sounds like it should be boring, like it's a meal made of sides and no mains, but it works. I think it's just tough to beat the simple deliciousness of sauteed bok choy and plain-old Spanish rice n' beans. To be able to get them both together, at the same place, is satisfying.
This Cuban-Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side has been beloved for decades by blue collar workers, students, budget travelers and neighborhood residents alike. It's nothing fancy and half the size it used to be but there's still the same surly waiters, the big glass windows onto Broadway, the generous lunch portions and excellent fried rice.
La Caridad is part of quickly disappearing experience Chinese-Cuban Restaurants.
This is a "greasy spoon" type of place. No frills, low cost, large portions. It was once twice the size and is now a single store front, There used to be Chinese-Cuban Restaurants. downtown on 14th St. & 23rd St and both have closed, along with a slew of others across the city.
Best items in my opinion are the black beans and yellow rice served together, ropa viejo a skirt steak in brown sauce cooked until it's so tender it comes apart on your fork.
A Brief Explanation of Chinese-Cuban Restaurants:
After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, many Cuban Chinese left the island and some established Cuban Chinese food restaurants in the United States, mainly in New York City and Miami.
Traditional Cuban Chinese food should not be confused with the current trend of Chino-Latino fusion restaurants that have a modern fusion take on the blending of these two cuisine cultures.
I wanted to like this place since I love the idea of it, I like both Cuban and Chinese food, and there's a great down-to-earth feel to the place and the clientele. But the only really tasty dish my wife and I had was the fried rice. The fried pork chop which some yelpers inexplicably recommend was extremely dry. We also had the fried sweet plantains which lacked the texture and flavor of ones we've had at our local jerk chicken place. The black beans didn't have much taste either. Maybe tradition or UWS standards allow this place to do well, but I don't think it would last in, say, Queens.