Lo Nuestro Cafe Visited 1/26/2014 4.5 Forks

Lo Nuestro Cafe Av. Estrada 903 | Higueras, Guayaquil 00000, Ecuador

Even though everyone on our tour told us to be careful and to not really leave the hotel, I was determined to have my last dinner in Ecuador at a local restaurant instead of at the hotel bar again.  To be honest, I never felt in danger or not safe - as long as you catch a cab from the hotel and tell them to either wait for you or come back to pick you up, you'll be fine.  Everyone we had talked mentioned that the best place in the city was Lo Nuestro and Allison had actually been there on her last trip to the Galapagos, so off we went!  I was in love with from the moment I saw it.  The outside exterior had this beautiful old school South American feel with a lovely running fountain.  Even though I was there with Allison, it had this cute romantic feel. 

The inside is just as adorable.  I've never been to Cuba but this is exactly how I envision Cuba to be - a bit stuck in time but with a lot of old school character.  The menu here is very authentic and local and extremely seafood centric - love it!  Even though they had an English menu, it didn't really help too much in describing the dishes so we just winged it.  We split the ceviche lo nesutro ($11.88) and the parrillada de marisco ($29.17) with a vague idea of what each one was. 

The ceviche lo neustro turned out to essentially be a mixed seafood ceviche.   It was gorgeously presented - split into two portions on these huge sea/clam shells and then filled with a variety of yummy seafood.  It was super acidic and filled with red onion and cilantro.  Amazing.  There were chunks of shrimp, squid, octopus and fish fish.  Everything was incredibly fresh and clean tasting.  It's amazing that something as simple as cooking seafood in lime juice could taste so good.  This was a total steal at less than $12. 

Next we got the parrillada de marisco which essentially translates into grilled mixed seafood - so basically exactly what we had in the ceviche but in grilled form. 

There was about every form of seafood you could imagine on this plate.  There was jumbo shrimp, regular sized shrimp, grilled clams, squid, octopus, salmon and white fish and there was TONS of it.  It could easily feed 3 people.  All the seafood was grilled and charred nicely - it had this almost burned, smokey flavor to it but it wasn't burned at all.  I tried my best to clean the plate since it was so good but even with my monster appetite couldn't finish it.  Even though it's hard to get super full on seafood, I was uncomfortably full by the end of it. 

I left the restaurant devastated knowing that it was the end of a life-changing vacation but I was so happy and grateful to had this experience.  I am now totally having a massive love affair with South America.  The restaurant was the perfect cap to the end of my trip and I'm so glad that I took the "risk" of leaving the hotel to explore some place local and delicious.  Until next time Ecuador.  Total bill:  $55 for 2 with tax and tip