Sunday was our farewell day in NYC. So before heading out, we wanted to eat a good brunch. I picked Sushi Samba, a sushi/brazilian/peruvian restaurant near Union Square. This was also the only time where I got the streets mixed up. We ended up at Park Ave north, instead of Park Ave south. Oops. No biggie though, we hopped on the Lexington train and made it down there in a jiffy. Sushi Samba is a fairly small place. It’s very cute and bright inside. They play samba music. There’s a sushi bar in the middle, as it takes up most of the space in the whole restaurant. There’s an eating area where the sushi bar is, and through the doorway, there’s a loungey area.
It wasn’t very busy at all when we were there, so the staff was extra attentive. We went with the family style brunch. I’d checked online, and it said it was 3 selections from the first course and 3 selections from the second course plus free pika pika cocktails. That wasn’t the case in reality. It was really just 4 selections from the family brunch menu and no free cocktail. No big deal though, as it almost did seem too good to be true, especially for NYC! But we did order some fruit juices, and they were discounted a few dollars. I went with a blackberry and strawberry sucos mistas, which was beyond good. That’s just a fresh fruit juice. J got a batida with asian pear and two other fruits I forgot. A batida comes with sweetened condensed milk, in addition to the fruit. That’s something I distinctly remember about Brazil, how abundant the fruit was and how everyone drank freshly made juice all the time.
We went with the sunday samba roll, which came with , smoked salmon, cream cheese, and cucumber, plus some heapings of salad. It was good. I’m not big on smoked fish, but this wasn’t extremely strong in flavor. And I do have to say I love the coolness of the cream cheese. They’re big on cream cheese in sushi rolls in Brazil and Mexico. We also picked the doce de leite french toast. This was AWESOME. It was thick bread and came with a really sweet and incredible syrup. It had something chopped up in it, and we’re not sure what it was, but we both loved it. It also came with some asian pear and fresh fruit.
Next up was the was the eggs benedict, which came with huge pieces of smoked salmon. The eggs were poached in a strange way so that it was mostly yolk, and that the yolk was not cooked at all so it was very runny. I didn’t mind it, but I know some people do not like runny eggs. Instead of english muffin, it came on some toasted bread. It was also topped with some baby cilantro greens, which was such a light and refreshing cilantro flavor. Finally, we had the churrasco and eggs. This was also delicious. It is fairly plain, as Brazilians don’t season their meat very much when grilling, but it was cooked very well and had plenty of natural flavor. Even though it’s not a fancy cut of meat at all, it wasn’t tough or anything. I liked the freshly fried onion rings too! All in all, a very good brunch!
We had an early reservation as we had to eat, catch the A train, and head up to Washington Heights. We were seated promptly and our effervescent waiter asked us if we’d dined there before. Once he found out we were newbies, he recommended that since the portions were large, for two he would recommend two appetizers, an entrée, and a side dish. Sounded good with us. In the meantime, we ordered a mojito and another drink whose name I forget. They were very attractive drinks. Much more attractive than the people drinking them. My drink was good and strong, the mojito was the best. It was truly the best mojito we’d ever had. I’m not crazy about them, but this one was so good. And it came with a stick of actual sugar cane you could gnaw on. Yum. They were strong too, and we could both feel them. We were excited about riding the subway drunk. 
We decided to go with the calamari salad, and when we told our waiter, he said it was large, so we should probably just stick with one appetizer. Kudos to him for not trying to milk extra money out of us. Bravo. This salad was indeed ginormous. It comes with the fancy greens, crispy fried calamari, chayote (which we’d never had before, looks like green apple, tastes like nothing but has a nice crunch), hearts of palm (which J had never had but I had eaten plenty of in Brazil), banana, and cashews, in a sesame orange dressing. The dressing was very light, not too sesame-y or orange-y. The calamari were the best part. It was a great salad.
As an entrée, we went with the honey rum glazed pot roast of pork. You can never go wrong with pork in a Cuban restaurant, or a Chinese restaurant for that matter. This came with some good hunks of fatty and juicy pork, sautéed baby bok choy, fried plantains, and enoki mushrooms. The sauce was strong, and the flavor was everywhere. You could see big chunks of thick bacon that had been in the juice. Those had extremely strong flavors. I loved everything. And with that salad, it was plenty of food. We also got some plantain fried rice with avocado salad. It was basically fried rice with some plaintain chunks topped with guacamole. It wasn’t anything special. So that was the lowlight of the meal. But it was a good accompaniment to the strong flavors of the entrée.
The service was good and attentive. The place does get loud when people start filling up, but what are you gonna do. You’re in a hip NYC restaurant, who doesn’t want to yap? The sociological highlight of the evening was the cafeteria table in the middle. A party of 11 high school girls, all perfect and blonde, were having some type of celebration. How come when I was in high school, I didn’t go to hip expensive restaurants? I feel jipped. Then, a party of 11 college men, all perfect in their button down striped shirts, were also having some type of celebration. You can’t even plan that kind of stuff.
" list. So of course, I decided to try them all. Join me for this 15-post series, as I test out each of these cocktails to see just how worthy they are.
Read the whole 
