A 1929 lunch counter on Calle San Francisco with the original Formica tables, white-coated waiters who have worked here longer than most of the guests have been alive, and the best mallorca de queso in San Juan — a buttered, pressed, slightly sweet roll filled with cheese and ham, dusted with powdered sugar.
Order the mallorca, an orange juice, and a café con leche, and you have the standard San Juan breakfast for under ten dollars. The lunch menu — chicken-and-rice, ropa vieja, sandwiches — is honest but the place is really about the morning. Service is gruff in the old-school Spanish-Caribbean way; it does not detract.