El Cantinflas

Unilocal directed me to this low key Puerto Rican restaurant/​dive bar in my quest to find spanish food one night after 8pm. Let it be known: this is a dive bar that serves Puerto Rican food — most folks in this place are there because it’s close to the el and serves cheap drinks. However, dive is almost a bit harsh of a description, as the place has clearly been renovated recently, sporting nice floors, crisp drywall, and tasteful lighting accents.
Anyway, the food itself. I obviously got the mofonogo (with chicken), and found myself quite impressed — they’ve got it down. The plantain itself was perfectly subtle but loaded with flavor, while the chicken was moist and perfectly fried. Portions were generous, and the presentation was far above par for a bar.
El Cantinflas is certainly an adventure — but unquestionably a worthwhile one.
Side note: they apparently have $ 7 PBR buckets on the weekend.

Ok so I recently purchased the Groupon for two orders of tacos, two beers and an order of fried plantains. I had never been to or heard of this place before but when I looked up the location I noticed it was less than a mile from my boyfriend’s house so thought it was worth the try.
We get to the place and while it was in a not so nice looking area we were excited to try the food. Once we entered we noticed this place was more of a bar with only about 3 or 4 small tables against the wall that were occupied. Welp there went our dinner plans… so we asked if we could take out our food and the bartender was extremely nice and had no problem with this. We drank our beer while we waited, and had another as the food took a little longer than we would have expected.
I got the chicken and the pork taco and my BF got the steak and the shrimp. I enjoyed my tacos with the hot sauce they included with our order but did feel that they were lacking as they only had meat, some potato (I think) and that’s it. No lettuce, tomato, etc. The BF wasn’t a fan of his tacos, the shrimp taco had those really small baby shrimps! The plantains were delish served with this mayo ketchup sauce (that’s what I believe it was).
All in all we were full and spent less than $ 20 including tip but we wont be going back. I bumped them from 2 stars to 3 stars because the staff (bartender) was super pleasant and helpful.

Good lil dive bar, food is excellent and beer is priced right.

Walked into this corner bar with an unassuming façade down by the El in Kensington? Regardless of my ambiguous grasp on which North Philly neighborhood Cantinflas actually resides in, there’s one thing I’m confident of – delicious food. Frankly, my knowledge of Puerto Rican food is completely blank. So while I’m no expert, I can profess that the sampler I had (which contained some fried pork, chicken and quesadilla) was quite good.
The owner tells me that they’re looking to revamp their drink selection and continue pushing the food as a reason to visit, which I’m looking forward to. Not sure if they do takeout but that’d also be good reason to stop in.