El Cilantrillo

Afrentao has no direct translation in English, but in Caribbean Spanish it loosely translates to “a glutton who eats other people’s food.” So when dining at the Puerto Rican restaurant El Cilantrillo, which calls itself “La casa del afrentao,” be prepared for a feast.

The restaurant is a celebration of Puerto Rico, gone maximalist. Heaping plates of meat, mounds of garlicky mashed plantains, whole fish fried and stuffed with other seafood. All that while a band plays salsa on a huge stage, loud and lively enough to get people out of their seats and moving their hips.

“It feels like home,” says Yannick Jordan, who grew up in Puerto Rico and is a project manager for the company of restaurants that includes Cilantrillo. “But it feels like a family party at home, because we always have tropical music playing.”

A Puerto Rican couple, Hiram and Dianne Turull, started the first El Cilantrillo in 2017 on Vine Street in Kissimmee. Hiram was a home cook and the vice president of a bank in Puerto Rico; Dianne’s family owned a restaurant on the island. Combining their culinary and business acumen to open a Puerto Rican restaurant in the United States was a dream for them.

The restaurant became so successful that the Turull family opened three more locations, including a space in Kissimmee’s Old Town with a large stage and indoor and outdoor bars. Their formula is simple: huge, delicious portions of beautifully plated Puerto Rican food; a warm service; and a lively atmosphere that often involves music.

Both Hiram and Dianne brought recipes from Puerto Rico that inform the restaurant’s large menu. The famous El Afrentao is a monster of a dish, with a whole fried snapper and a giant fried pork chop standing vertically on a serving plate, along with chicken, steak, conch, shrimp, rice, and plantains; it’s meant to feed five to six people.

The menu is full of heavy, protein-centered dishes sure to satisfy even a glutton: whole fried snapper stuffed with seafood and drowned in a garlic- or tomato-based sauce; ribeye steaks with butter, garlic, and rosemary; chicken breasts stuffed with sweet plantains and covered in mozzarella and bacon.

The restaurant is also known for their mofongos, moist mounds of green plantains mashed with garlic and stuffed with one of a variety of proteins. As far as that Puerto Rican staple goes, theirs is on the softer side, and comes presented in a Puerto Rican mortar called a pilón.

Wash these heavy hitters down with a piña colada or a mojito. “If we have 10 tables, 11 tables order mojitos,” says Jordan.

After a drink or two, the heavy, delicious food you’ve just eaten is begging to be worked off to the rhythm of bachata or salsa. There’s no dance floor, but that doesn’t stop anyone from dancing between tables, Jordan says. “Puerto Rican and Latin people, they will stand up with every type of music.”

On nights when music isn’t playing, you can hear another important Spanish word being repeated between customers, many of whom don’t know each other: provecho, the equivalent of “bon appetit.” Throughout Latin America, it’s customary to wish even strangers a good meal. At El Cilantrillo, that’s a fairly safe wish to make.