- What is the first thing that comes into your head
when I say Miami?
Is it the beach?
There's a little more to Miami than just the beach.
This is Little Havana.
(upbeat music)
Miami has the largest Cuban population outside of Cuba.
Cuban immigration has greatly influenced modern Miami.
What we see today is a vibrant blend
of Cuban and American culture.
And it you're a fan of the movie Chef you might want
to stick around.
Our first stop is Yisell Bakery.
Yisell Bakery is this charming Cuban bakery.
It's very good Cuban snacks, breads, cakes.
Everything looks so good I can't wait to start eating.
This specialty of Yissel is the Guayaba Pastelitos.
Or the guava pastry.
Pastelitos are a Cuban snack.
They're good for breakfast.
They're just perfect for eating between meals.
Pastelitos are usually paired with a sweet guava jam
or with strawberry, raspberry, or even like savory ones
like chicken or beef.
But the most popular one is the guayaba which is guava
most abundantly an Cubans they love the guayaba.
They like to put it in a lot of their food.
This is like eating pie but so much better.
The crust is so flakey and buttery and crispy.
And inside is guayaba jam.
It's not too sweet, it's just like the perfect blend.
Pastelitos are like common at family gatherings.
You know like-
These are croquetas or croquets.
I just saw them making them fresh
so I couldn't resist ordering them.
It's basically like mashed potatoes
with chicken or beef inside.
This one's chicken.
It's so crispy and it's so yummy I could like maybe
40 of these.
But I shouldn't.
Probably don't have 40.
Six, I can eat six.
This is a capuchino.
It's basically supposed to be a conical thumb shape.
Does it look thumb shaped?
It's kind of thimb shaped.
It's a sponge cake so it doesn't sit up.
Oh my god.
(ca ching)
It's like eating a cloud soaked in syrup.
So good.
Even though it's soaked in sugar
it's not overbearingly sweet.
It's just, it's just the perfect little cake.
It's like eating-
imagine that, Cuban -
(ca ching)
Los Pinarenos Fruteria is a Little Havana landmark.
This building looks like it sort of could have been
air lifted straight out of Cuba.
It's closed today, I'm a little bummed out about that
Should have come a little early.
If you're a fan of the movie Chef you will recognize
that this is the place where the chef and the kid
are walking around shopping for ingredients before
they make the first Cubano.
If you come here the must have thing to try
is sugarcane juice and fruit smoothies, don't miss that.
We are at Domino Park in Little Havana landmark.
Locals have been playing dominoes here for decades.
And so much fun to watch them.
Gets really complicated, you can see them concentrating
so hard on their game and in between sips of Cuban coffee.
It's really nice to see.
Now for some Cuban fashion.
These are the traditional Cuban shirt.
It's called a guayabera.
You see the four pockets on the front?
Basically it was created for keeping all your little things
like going to work, your handkerchief, your cigars,
other instruments.
But it got really popular because or the guayabera farmers.
And they just used all four pockets to stuff in the fields.
And that's how it got its name.
What would I keep if I had a shirt with four pockets?
I really like the ability and the convenience
of dividing up by sweet and savory snacks.
What would you keep in a shirt with four pockets?
Tell me in the comments.
This is Versailles.
It's the most popular Cuban restaurant in the world.
Versailles is a French name but in the 50's it became
a meeting place for Cuban exiles.
Cubans kind of took over and now it's Cuban.
In the movie Chef this is where they eat the cubano
Cuban sandwich for the first time.
Okay, drum roll.
This is the start of this episode, the Cubano.
This is what I've been waiting for.
Really excited to eat it and it looks amazing.
There's a layer of ham, cheese, you can see mustard
and pickles and there's roast pork.
And the bread is like crispy.
It looks great.
Okay, I'm ready to bite into it.
(ca ching)
Oh my god.
The mustard adds so much to it.
Then the pork is juicy.
The bread is buttered in the inside
and crispy on the outside.
And the pickles are so sour.
I love the taste of the sourness with the meat.
Definitely one of the best things I've ever eaten.
Cubano.
This is Materva.
It's a Cuban soft drink.
It's made from Yerba Mate which is a type of tea
that's popular all over Latin America.
And it tastes like
imagine tea, alcohol, cough syrup,
cake icing, all mixed together
and really really fizzy.
This isn't nice.
I cannot stop drinking this.
We are the El Pub Restaurant.
We are going to eat another famous Cuban sandwich
called the Media Noche.
Media Noche basically means midnight snack.
(ca ching)
The bread is buttery and flakey but it's not the typical
Cuban bread that they use for the Cubano I mentioned.
This bread is soft and little bit sweet.
Very high calorie bread.
It was traditionally served to hard labor workers
who'd come after midnight from a long day at work.
And now it's just a post dinner snack for gluttons like me.
This is like the perfect midnight snack.
It's sweet, its sour.
The pickle is vinegary.
And the cheese is cutting through all of that and the roast
pork is so dense.
Usually it has a layer of ham and
then a layer of roast pork.
I just opted for what they call vienna, which is just
roast pork because the bread and the meat ratio
is completely balanced.
So yeah, this is a great sign.
Platano maduros.
This might be my favorite dessert ever.
If you know me you know I live for bananas.
Bananas are going extinct and we need to preserve all
this banana heritage that we have.
Okay, platano maduras is basically a deep fried
banana snack.
(ca ching)
Bananas deep fried.
It's really sweet plantain that's deep fried.
Crispy, soft, sweet, chewy and sticky-
what's not to love?
Speaking of love, let's get some Cuban coffee!
What can I tell you about Cuban coffee?
It's strong, passionate, sweet.
Just like the personality of the city.
If you wonder down any street in Little Havana
you come across the little cafecito or little windows where
they serve you coffee.
This is a cafecito.
It's a shot of black Cuban coffee with sugar, lots of sugar.
This is a cafe con leche.
Which is tow shots of Cuban coffee with milk and sugar.
And this is the cortadito.
Which is a shot of cafe con leche.
One shot of Cuban coffee with milk and sugar.
It's swwet.
- [Barista] If you drink too much you become-
- Sickly.
- Yeah, you can't control yourself if you're not used to it.
- It's so good though.
It's so strong and so sweet, it's totally my kind of coffee.
I love it and I'm not even a coffee person,
I'm actually a tea person.
But oh my god, I'm a changed woman now.
Cuban coffee, the best.
And now for some dancing.
Cuban salsa or Salsa Cubana is like a big social activity
for Cubans.
It's sexy, it's energetic, it's passionate.
And it looks like so much fun.
So the Call and Chain club is the best place here
in Little Havana to catch a live band and some salsa dancing
and drink a mojito while you're at it.
(salsa music)
Alright, let's talk about Cuban cigars.
Cuban cigars have this mystic around them.
But Cuban cigars in America aren't Cuban.
Although the people making them are.
Some Cuban families, during Fidel Castro's regime
had their entire business confiscated
so they had to come to America nd start from scratch.
(ca ching)
Their businesses would have been over 100 years old today.
Most of the Cuban cigars in America that are sold here
are either manufactured here or in the Honduras,
the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Mexico.
The one thing any Cuban person will tell you about a Cuban
cigar is that the flavor of the tobacco in the cigar
comes from the soil of the region where it's harvested.
The soil gets the tobacco and any Cuban person will tell you
that nothing is like a Cuban cigar.
El Nuevo Supermarket is an old Cuban style supermarket.
It's got fresh produce, some traditional items used
in Cuban cooking.
And a bakery and cafeteria in the back.
Okay, now to eat all the things we got.
This is called Coperia.
It says tradicional, that's why we picked it up,
it's probably like a traditional candy.
It says milk caramel with coconut.
It looks somewhat like a macaroon,
like the coconut macaroon.
Oh it smells so good, just like coconut candy.
Imagine toffee with coconut.
It's so good.
It's buttery, soft, melts in your mouth.
It's like the closest I can describe this
is the Indian coconut.
(light upbeat music)
Guava and milk cream.
I'm sure this also like a type of candy.
(ca ching)
This is just like milk but feed.
The bird feed that we ate as kids.
And we still do actually in India.
It's- oh my god, it's really good.
I'll finish this whole thing.
And the top layer is basically guava jelly.
It comes right off.
- [Camera Person] Oh nice.
- But together they taste really good.
Azucar Ice Cream is another Little Havana institution
set up by land order of a Cuban immigrant.
The flavors are inspired by the love
for Latin American foods and flavors.
The flavors like cafe con leche which is Cuban coffee
and Guarapina which is sugarcane and pineapple.
I feel like Cuban Americans are very proud, strong
and passionate people.
Some of them had to leave everything behind in Cuban
and come to America and start their life from scratch.
I think this is the great American story, isn't it?
One of the most amazing aspects of America,
the people from different cultures, they come here.
They leave everything behind.
Set up their lives here from scratch.
And they do whatever it takes.
They work as taxi drivers, secretaries, whatever it
takes to pay the bills.
They bring their language, their culture, their food
and their resilient spirit.
They make this their home.
Little Havana is home to so many Cuban immigrants.
I think it provides them a special kind of community
and a support system.
With friendly faces and connections to the past.
Connections that they might not get a chance
to rediscover as it's almost impossible for them
to go back to Cuba.
If you spend even a little bit of time here you go back
with a little piece of Cuba in your heart forever.
I hope the locals can find a way to preserve this place.
The Cuban heart of Miami.
Alright, that's it for this video guys.
I really hope you enjoyed this video.
We really enjoyed making it.
In future videos we are going to be diving a little
bit deeper into Cuban coffee, the Cubano
and Cuba's complicated history.
Leave a comment below, tell us what you think.
Please, please share this video with people who you think
might enjoy it and and please subscribe to our channel
follow along all the action on Instagram
and we'll see you in the next one.
(light upbeat music)