Cuban-like sandwich

A nice Cuban-like sandwich in an unlikely place: Happy Days Convenient Food and Liquor, 3755 W. Montrose. The Cuban owner makes the sandwiches every day, and then presses and cooks them to order (until he runs out). You can get them "soft" or "crispy," $5 each (including tax). Here's the mighty nice "crispy" sandwich. There's some seating in back, but most orders seem destined to be eaten in the car (off-street parking) or carried home.

Cheers,
Wade

That might be a very good sandwich, but I don't know if it can be called a Cuban. For starters, there does not appear to be any lechon. Consider the following post from G Wiv re the revered Latin American Cafeteria to see where I'm coming from:


http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t= ... n+american

Consider too, this historical piece:

http://www.28news.com/programming/treasures.shtml

(Click on the Cuban Sandwich story, on the left column.) This is a clip that I had posted on the other board some time ago.

JeffB,

I defer to you, and I've edited by post to refer to a "Cuban-like" sandwich.

It is still mighty tasty.

In my experience and travels, I've found variations on the archetypical Cuban sandwich, all of which were sold under the "Cuban" umbrella. The commonalities were: at least one type of pork (if only one, almost always ham), cheese, mustard, pickle, usually heated and compressed using a heavy press. The process somehow elevates a sandwich of relatively humble origin to another level, in a fashion similar to how igneous and sedimentary rocks are turned into metamorphic rocks..

Cheers,
Wade

Cuban-like --I like it. It might describe me. Que culpa tengo yo, de no haber nacido en Cuba?

Latin America, and much of the world, has coopted the sanuiche mixto of Cuba (even more so, the medianoche).

There are rules, though, regarding the real thing. Sort of like a Chicago hot dog, certain variations and improvements are great, but basic elements define the sandwich. They are:

Cuban bread, ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickle. Butter is almost always used by Cubans making cubans, almost never by others making Cubans.

Variations include, from almost-orthodox to controvesial:

mustard (or mustard mixed with mayo, very common as a Cuban condiment), Genoa salami, mortadella, lettuce and tomato, bacon, Chicago foodservice white cheese food.

The salami and mortadella are mostly to be found in Tampa, though my father in law, from Havana never stepped foot in Tampa but used mort on his. Lettuce and tomato is something I have never liked on this sandwich, as it throws everything off. It is by all accounts a recent invention. Bacon with lettuce and tomato on top of the traditional ingredients creates the "Miami sandwich" a fitting name for this Cuba-US mix. The easy melting, white processed cheese food used even by Marianao here might have some resonance with Cubans that just left Havana yesterday, since the produce available is dismal, but that is no excuse.

Making a good Cuban at home is pretty easy, especially if you have a press. Even a George Foreman grill works fine. I have a cuisinart griddle/press with a flat surface and a floating hinge that works perfectly for this. The hardest things to find when making a Cuban are the right bread and the lechon. My favorite bread substitute in Chicago is the banh mi form Ba Le. Once pressed, it is getting into the ballpark of the less lardy version of Cuban. As for the pork, make your own. Or shredded carnitas can work, or you can buy lechon from La Unica. Also, Westbrook market sells an Italian roast pork deli meat, porchetta they call it, though it is not, strictly speaking, porchetta. It is the only good version of roast pork I have ever had from a deli. I'm sure you can get it at Caputo's, as that is likely where Westbrook gets theirs. (Boar's Head does/did a Cuban style roast pork that is one of the vilest things you could ever taste.) Westbrook also has the very hard to find Cuban style ham, which is covered in garlic and paprika. I've never been a fan, but it's interesting that they have it.

Wade,

This post will be considerably easier to read if you would resize your picture. These site guidelines will provide you information. Our preference is a width no more than 600 pixels. Presently, your photo is 864 pixels which requires everyone to shift the screen to read the information, which interests us.

Your cooperation is appreciated.

Regards,

Cathy2.

. . . and done.

Cheers,
Wade

JeffB,

I would personally consider the addition of lettuce and tomato to be controversial.

Cheers,
Wade

A couple questions on the sandwich - does it have pickles? it didn't seem to on first glance. Secondly - mustard?

JeffB, I have another cuban sandwich question for you, though not on pan cubano, rather on a version of a cuban steak sandwich served by the havana sandwich shop in Atlanta (which I wholeheartedly endorse, by the way, and which is very traditional in most other ways) Their steak sandwich is always served with little bits of potato, almost shoestring potatos included within the sandwich. Have you ever seen this variation before?

zim wrote:Secondly - mustard?

Zim,

Which of course reminds me of the great Cuban sandwich mustard debate on c-h's the best message board. Actually, I think you were the one who originally pointed the long past thread out, still not resolved, eh?

I'm pro mustard on a Cuban sandwich, but I imagine the preference is, not only regional, but how one's mom or favorite Cuban sandwich stand makes them.

Enjoy,
Gary

Zim, yes, shoestring potatoes are not uncommon on pan con bistec. They are required, I believe, on fritas, the small Cuban burgers where the meat is seasoned to something like Mexican chorizo. In fact, Cubans put fried potatoes in lots of stuff, even when it seems not to make a lot of difference, as in picadillo, bacalao, and carne con papas. The frying does change the dish's character, however, and is worth the extra messy step.

The mustard debate was one of those abstract, rhetorical, ivory tower food discussions that I really despised about that other board. A bunch of smart folks theorizing about what the "Cuban diaspora" might authentically eat on their deli sandwiches, as if they had nothing to go by except for a few pottery shards and a tooth. Never mind the mostarza-eating Cubans writing from South Florida, too ignorant to understand that they were wrong. (Similar was the beating down from afar of Jim in Logan Square for suggesting that Poles now enjoy paczki that is not made from sawdust and prune paste.)

Nina Lalli's piece, The Cubano: An Ode to Pernil, from the 03.10.05 edition of The Village Voice.

Erik M.

JeffB wrote:Zim, yes, shoestring potatoes are not uncommon on pan con bistec. They are required, I believe, on fritas, the small Cuban burgers where the meat is seasoned to something like Mexican chorizo. In fact, Cubans put fried potatoes in lots of stuff, even when it seems not to make a lot of difference, as in picadillo, bacalao, and carne con papas. The frying does change the dish's character, however, and is worth the extra messy step.

Whoops, another thread I missed.

One of these days, I'll do a bit on Cafe Laguardia on North Ave, next to Armrinds on the Oak Park/Chicago cusp. The original Cafe Laguardia on Armitage has not garnered great reports on Chowhound. This one might not be great per se, but they have very nice daily specials (read good cheap chow). The real treat there, however, is the fritas.

Yes, it is served with shoestring fries, and this side of Zascianek's contractor special, Taco Bell's taco salad, or any decent Texas plate of country fried chicken, is about the most fattening thing you can eat. It's a mixture of ground pork and chorizo melded into one ugly patty, gilded with American cheese, moistened with mojo, enriched with mayo and finally finished with a few tiny potatoe. What a guilty pleasure!

Cafe Laguardia West
6818 W. North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60707
(773) 385-8930

http://www.cafelaguardia.com/west.shtml

PS
Before Erik throws it in my face, yes I did not think much of Cafe Laguardia West when it first opened. But neither the daily specials or the fritas were there early on.

Well, it seems that La Guardia might be the only place serving fritas in Chicago. Interesting.

Erik, thanks for the link. An ok article, but by the end I thought that her expertise was a bluff. She's surely correct about the bread, though I might quibble with some of the author's version of orthodoxy. Butter is something all Cubans can agree upon, and it is not on her list anywhere. Mustard is a fine option, and one that is so pervasive among places renowned for their Cubans (see Latin American in Miami), that the contrived mustard debate should be put to rest.

And Cubans don't often call roast pork pernil. Even though pernil literally refers to a ham, and lechon literally refers to a suckling pig, Cubans call roast pork, generically, lechon, while Puerto Ricans often make the distinction.

Oddly, she proclaims that the sandwich has strict rules (which is does, with exceptions, like all good rules) but then says about lechon "do what you like." I'd have to disagree. I can also attest that it is quite possible to mess up roast pork.

Further, it's quite incorrect to suggest that a proper Cuban roast pork is usually the tougher shoulder. In fact, it is usually a "green" or fresh ham (ie, a pernil). She also is unaware of the use of mojo criollo in making lechon.

The author cites the Stradley site (which is itself a series of unattributed borrowings) but fails to note Stradley's focus on sandwich's origins in Ybor City near the turn of the century. The Columbia, a cornerstone of the neighborhood, opened as a Cuban sandwich and coffee shop for cigar rollers in 1905 -- only a few years after Jose Marti wrote the Cuban "Declaration of Independence, " "Las Resoluciones," and gave key speeches while in exile in Ybor. (And a few years after Roosevelt departed from Tampa to finally "emancipate" the island.)

Whether it was "invented" in Havana or Tampa, the sandwich probably originated at a bakery that made Cuban bread and roasted perniles de cerdo, two things not often done at home then.

Until I read the Cafe Laguardia website, I never realized that Tartufo was a cuban dish. I alwys thought it a Jersey Italian specialty.

And of course, they have burritos. Chinese or Jewish food would make more sense. No, really.

It's funny that you mention the Chinese connection, JeffB. Just last weekend, I was in New York and decided to visit one of my favorite cheap grub holes-La Chinita Linda on Eighth Avenue.

It is the last of the Chinese-Cuban places left in lower Manhattan that I know of. Legends says that the sugar cane plantation owner's used to bring Chinese slaves over toi work the plantations. As a result this weird fusion Cuban-Chinese Cuisine developed.

When castro came to power, most of the slaves from the sugar plantations immigrated to the US. In New York City, at one time, there were scores of these dumpy little restaurants that served this Cuban -Chinese Cuisine.

Al Chnita Linda is the last one standing. Sadly, since I moved away three years ago, it has undergone an ownership change. Gone are the grumpy chinese waiters in white shirts and black pants. The once stark interior has been brightened up with murals painted on the walls an flowered plastic table cloths.

More troubling is the reduction of the Cuban portion of the menu to a small block of five or six items on the first page while the rest of the menu is now completely dominated by strip mall Chinese American fare.

The yellow rice now seemed overcooked. The red beans muddy and murky as if they had been prepared days before. The deep fried chicken chunks still tsay and filling when peppered up with some hot sauce.

Notably missing from the menu was the shredded beef (think a blander version of ropa vieja served in a somewhat sweet tomato sauce.

Don't get me wrong. La Chinita Linda was never a great place to eat. But, it provided me with a certain comfort level knowing that I could get a really good (though sometimes really weird) meal for 5 or 6 bucks.

Chino-Cubano has been discussed somewhere around here before.

I'd take that legend with a grain of salt, though the article below suggests that Chinese laborers worked under dismal conditions in 19th centuury Cuba.

Havana once had a fairly large Chinatown that was established in much the same way as other North American Chinatowns. The neighborhood overlaps with Cayo Hueso, where my father-in-law grew up. To better understand the Chinese experience in Cuba (and I don't purport to understand it, though my wife has at least one Chinese-Cuban relative) you need to know a little about the complicated way that race is/was viewed in Spanish, French, and Portuguese (or maybe I should just say "Catholic") colonies. Racism and a sort of color-caste is central to the culture. But people, cultures, foods and bloodlines historically mixed much more freely. New Orleans is our example.

Anyway, Chinese restaurants cooking this hybrid food long existed in Cuba, and I thought that the NYC places pre-dated Castro, though I could be wrong.

A very fine remaining example is Arco Iris in Tampa, where you can get a minuta empanizado (fried grouper) on Cuban-style fried rice with sandwiches and coffee.

More about Chinatown in Havana

http://havanajournal.com/culture_commen ... 2_0_3_0_M/

Vital Information wrote:

JeffB wrote:Zim, yes, shoestring potatoes are not uncommon on pan con bistec. They are required, I believe, on fritas, the small Cuban burgers where the meat is seasoned to something like Mexican chorizo. In fact, Cubans put fried potatoes in lots of stuff, even when it seems not to make a lot of difference, as in picadillo, bacalao, and carne con papas. The frying does change the dish's character, however, and is worth the extra messy step.

Whoops, another thread I missed.

One of these days, I'll do a bit on Cafe Laguardia on North Ave, next to Armrinds on the Oak Park/Chicago cusp. The original Cafe Laguardia on Armitage has not garnered great reports on Chowhound. This one might not be great per se, but they have very nice daily specials (read good cheap chow). The real treat there, however, is the fritas.

Yes, it is served with shoestring fries, and this side of Zascianek's contractor special, Taco Bell's taco salad, or any decent Texas plate of country fried chicken, is about the most fattening thing you can eat. It's a mixture of ground pork and chorizo melded into one ugly patty, gilded with American cheese, moistened with mojo, enriched with mayo and finally finished with a few tiny potatoe. What a guilty pleasure!

Cafe Laguardia West
6818 W. North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60707
(773) 385-8930

http://www.cafelaguardia.com/west.shtml

PS
Before Erik throws it in my face, yes I did not think much of Cafe Laguardia West when it first opened. But neither the daily specials or the fritas were there early on.

Cafe LaGuardia (West) took the best thing they make off their menu; perhaps their one decent dish...but if you ask, you can have the glorious, sickening, gross sandwich de fritas--one picture does not quite capture the extent of this mess*:






*Note, they forgot the accessories, but it was still pretty good.

On a related note, I just finished reading the chapter on Cuban Fritas in John T. Edge's book, Hamburgers & Fries.

Check it out if you haven't already.

He sure makes genuine Fritas de Calle Ocho sound appealing.

E.M.

Erik M. wrote:On a related note, I just finished reading the chapter on Cuban Fritas in John T. Edge's book, Hamburgers & Fries.

Check it out if you haven't already.

He sure makes genuine Fritas de Calle Ocho sound appealing.

E.M.

Ok, is the one above, not genuine or not appealing (or both)

Vital Information wrote:Ok, is the one above, not genuine or not appealing (or both)

Oh, no, I wasn't suggesting anything of the sort. It's just that I have never tried this style of sandwich, and the chapter in his book made me very, very curious.

BTW, nice pics. And, so artfully arranged!

E.M.

It would be unusual for the frita to be made with ground pork, fwiw.