Hey, Tampa! When You Play Miami in the Game of Cubanos, It’s Eat or be Eaten

A Cuban sandwich at the Oasis Cafe in Key Biscayne, May 29, 2019. It is not made with salami. (Annali Hayward/Key News)

The final episode of Game of Cubanos: South Florida aired this week when Sue Carlton of the Tampa Bay Times proclaimed her city “lays rightful claim to the Cuban sandwich.”

Key News caught up with Carlos Flores, owner of beloved Key café Oasis for his take on the renewed battle about the “Cubano.”

What’s the beef?

Carlton was crowing at the New York Times’ choice of Tampa over Miami as the five-letter answer to “city famous for its Cuban sandwiches” in a crossword earlier this month.

Ah, yes. Tampa, first of its name, usurper of sandwiches, mother of pickles, and rightful king of the Cubano throne.

Cue Twitter spats – “This is a bad joke, right?” asked Rick Hirsch of the Miami Herald – and of course, memes.

Here’s the thing. Technically, Carlton has a point. It’s just a bit boring.

A side of history

In 1885 there was indeed a nascent Cuban community in Ybor City, an old Tampa neighborhood. They were chiefly cigar makers who had left Key West some decades prior, forgoing its unforgiving infrastructure and climate. They were joined, apparently, by some industrious Italians and Germans.

Meanwhile, down south, there was little more than gators and grass. Just 300 people lived in Miami in 1896. So it’s conceivable that the first time someone slapped some meat between two slices of bread north of Havana was in the Tampa area. The question is, who cares?

Not Flores, for one. His 65-year-old institution sells 800 sandwiches a week, and as a professionally trained chef, he knows a thing or two about a good Cubano.

Cubano-a-Cubano

Flores says of the squabble: “Whether it’s the original or not, you have to own it and have
fun.”

Miami knows how to own it – and the fun for Flores is in providing his “family” (that’s
customers to you and me) with the very best.

His Cubano leans on carefully sourced, higher-welfare organic meats. It’s what sets his
$9.95 sandwich apart from the pretenders.

“It’s not what you’d typically find. But it’s what we [as chefs] want to eat,” he says.

He has little regard for whether there’s an intruding slice of salami – Tampa style — or not. He cares about provenance. Treating the ingredients right. Eschewing cheap margarine for proper butter (“always”). Lovingly bathing his North-Carolina Cheshire Farms pork shoulder in house marinade for a day before slow-cooking overnight until it falls apart, fat rendered down, leaving soft but textured meat, smoky-sweet from the mojo. All the other details fall into place as they should: dijon, pickles, la plancha. Perfection.

Oasis is working on bringing the baking of their Cuban bread in-house and expanding their
premises this summer. We can expect even more variations on the Cubano.

“You have to evolve,” says Flores. “The original didn’t have organic pork shoulder. But it tastes better!”
Flores is Mexican, and his chefs are Nicaraguan, Peruvian and Cuban. Could there be a
more perfect microcosm of Miami than that? He sums it up: “It’s our party, and everyone is
welcome to join!”

So Tampa, you can keep the roots. Miami owns it.

Crowning yourself ruler of something doesn’t always work out. Just ask Daenerys Targaeryan.