Vinny P.
Yelp
First, let me state clearly at the start of my review that this review is ONLY for the take-out food window located on the left side of the porch (to the left of the store's door), and which is open for only considerably shorter hours than the market/store itself. The porch covers the ordering window, and also provides some makeshift stools that allow sitting at nearrow shelves built on the porch railing.
I ordered a number of take out items from this place repeatedly across a recent 8-day stay in Key West at a nearby hotel.
The menu for the take-out window is quite extensive, and offers quite a few foods from Eastern European countries. The quality of the food is quite good.
However, in general, and largely due to the incredibly tiny kitchen space, it takes the staff quite a bit of time to prepare any one food item once it has been ordered, although most of the order window staffers make an effort to provide very accurate estimates regarding how long it will take to prepare the foods that were ordered; wait times of 10, 15, 20 and 25 minutes are not at all unusual, even at times when you are the only customer, and on days when they are crowded, well, wait times can be quite extraordinary!
I stayed in Key West and visited this place during the off-season, aka the low season, in August of 2014, and during my 8-day stay in the area, the posted hours (on a large sign mounted on the porch near the take-out window) were stated as 11 AM through at least 7 PM pretty much every day, and these were also the hours that the staffers would recite if asked.
The reality was far different, however, perhaps simply because it was the low season for Key West, and in reality, I NEVER found the take-out window open even by 11:30 or 11:40 AM on most days of my stay, and sometimes it was not open even at 12:30 PM or 1 PM.
On several of the many days when the take-out window was still not open by about 45 minutes after the posted opening times, I would go inside the little store/market and ask the person at the counter if and when the take-out window was going to actually open. And, each time I did this, the check-out counter person acted a bit surprised, and a bit embarrassed, likely over the fact that the kitchen was not yet open, and then they would invariably grab a nearby cell phone and call someone and jabber in some kind of Eastern European language for about 30 seconds, after which they would put the phone down and tell me that if I were to come back in an hour, I would find the take-out window open, albeit quite belatedly!
And yes, when I returned an hour or two later, I always did find the take-out window open! Most of the staff who work at the take-out window are quite helpful and pleasant. There is one exception, an older man who seems to not only have a very hard time understanding even the simplest English-language statements, but also seems to have very poor short-term memory retention, and some other major cognitive difficulties as well. The shop and take-out kitchen would really be doing themselves a major favor by keeping this older man away from any customer interactions at the take-out ordering window, but I suspect that he is part of the family that owns the place, and thus it may be very hard for them to actually put this rule of thumb into practice!
