- So how did they make it in Miami?
Is it any good, Miami Cubans?
- It's not the same.
- Yeah, this is ours. - This is definitely ours.
And as you can see, it's awesome.
- It's an amazing sandwich.
- It is an amazing sandwich.
(upbeat music)
- When you think of Cubans in Florida,
you might not think of Tampa, but you should.
Today, Miami has the highest concentration
of Cuban-Americans in the state,
and in the entire country for that matter.
But back in the 19th century, before Miami was even a city,
it was here in Tampa that the cigar industry boomed
and the iconic Cuban sandwich was born.
You know the one.
Cuban bread, shredded pork, glazed ham,
Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, and crucially important,
specific only to Tampa, Genoa salami.
And while Miami basks in its modern and well-deserved
reputation as the capital of Cuban America,
400,000 Tampans wait patiently for their town
to get its Cubano due.
So we came down to Cigar City to do just that.
(upbeat music)
We started in Ybor City,
the neighborhood often called Cigar City,
is the soul of Old Tampa's immigrant populations,
and it's got a vibe all it's own.
Local tips: don't mind the roosters;
(rooster crows)
watch out for streetcars and cobblestones;
and never, ever accept a Cuban sandwich
that's been made with mayonnaise.
- Some places will put the mayonnaise on it,
and that's not an authentic Cuban sandwich.
It had to be able to sustain not being in air condition
so mayo would have gone bad.
(upbeat music)
- Andrea Gonzmart Williams is the fifth-generation
owner-operator of the historic Columbia Restaurant
on Ybor City's 7th Avenue.
It makes one of the best Cuban sandwiches in Tampa.
Turns out, there's a very specific reason.
- My grandfather, both of his grandfathers
were cigar rollers in Ybor City.
Cigar rolling in Ybor City
was what made the Columbia Restaurant so important,
because we got to feed all of these great cigar rollers.
So the Cuban sandwich in Tampa,
you start with your Cuban bread,
which obviously represents the Cubans.
You do your ham, which represents the Spaniards.
Then you go pork, Cubans.
Then you have your salami, which represents the Italian.
You top it with the Swiss cheese, which I always say
kind of melts it all together,
much like Ybor City is a melting pot.
And then you top your bread off with yellow mustard
and pickles, which represents the Germans.
It's very important that you layer it in these orders
so it hits your palate just so.
(upbeat music)
- We ordered some expertly layered Columbia Cubans to go,
and headed across the neighborhood for lunch
with the president of J.C. Newman, the last operational
cigar factory in Tampa.
(upbeat music)
- If you know anybody that's been,
that's had three or four generations living in Tampa,
chances are their family worked in the cigar industry,
because those were the only jobs around.
The cigar industry came to Tampa in 1886 from Key West,
that's when Martinez Ybor brought the whole industry
to Tampa looking for a place that had a port
to bring tobacco from Cuba that was located close to Cuba.
A place that had a railroad line to send cigars
up to New York
and Tampa was the ideal spot.
At its height, Tampa had 150 cigar factories,
and in the 1930s was making 500 million cigars a year.
And out of those 42,000 cigar manufacturers back in 1895,
we're the only one left.
- Wow.
- Making cigars today the same way my grandfather made them,
on the same machines, in the 1930s.
(upbeat music)
People think of Cubans settling in Miami,
but nobody has the heritage for cigars like Tampa does.
Nobody even has the heritage for Cuban sandwiches
like Tampa does.
One key to making a good Cuban sandwich
is the bread itself.
This bread comes from La Segunda Bakery.
(upbeat music)
- La Segunda is legendary in Tampa.
Up front, customers at this family-owned spot
stop by for breakfast sandwiches, Cuban pastries,
café con leche, but in back, a giant commercial bakery
cranks out authentic Cuban bread for... well, everyone.
Its own patrons, cross-country mail-order buyers,
long-time accounts like the Columbia Restaurant,
and pretty much any cook in the city
that wants to serve a real Cubano.
How long has La Segunda been around as a bakery?
- 102 years, since 1915.
Our bakers have been around an average of 20 years,
so we feel that they're a part of our family.
(upbeat music)
- Every day is a different day with the dough.
The bread is really like a sponge, it draws in the weather.
And that's the trick of the bread.
My name is Bryant Valdez,
I'm from La Segunda Central Bakery.
I've been here for 30 years and I love my job.
Been here since I was 17 years old.
All my family grew up into making Cuban bread.
I was a natural, really.
First it gets mixed, then we give it air time,
30 minutes tub time in English, then we end up rolling it.
The trick to rolling it is making sure that it's even.
Then, they will measure it in the back,
and put leaves on it.
The leaves are the face of the bread,
and it opens up the bread down the middle.
It opens up like a flower.
We use the palmetto leaf, that's the tradition my
great grandfather learned when he was in Cuba,
and that's also got a little bit of a sour flavor.
- So what's the move you're doing when you do that there?
- When we do that, we're banging it, we're stretching it,
we're making sure it's got a good length on it.
- Gotcha.
- And also, we knock out air out of the dough,
so they can really just measure and go.
But we're at 6,000 a shift, 18,000 a day.
We stay busy.
Miami's got, they don't have real Cuban bread to me,
but they got the form of it, not the taste.
There's no taste like that.
There's no bakery compared to the La Segunda.
- The main thing is that it's got a soft, flaky crust,
so that when it goes on the press, it's still crunchy
when you bite into your sandwich.
(upbeat music)
- What makes an authentic Tampa Cuban in your mind?
- Definitely the bread.
The bread has to be, it's known to Tampa from La Segunda.
- What about lettuce and tomato?
- Absolutely not.
That was more of an American thing, no, not on this.
It messes it up.
It is believed to have been from the Taino culture,
where they take the Cassava bread,
and what protein they had at the time, back in the days,
it would be what stuffed it.
But the Cuban sandwich was made here, in America.
(upbeat music)
But it was always a batido mamey, and a Cuban sandwich.
It's almost like a milkshake and french fries and a burger.
It's delicious, you can't let it go.
- I'm so glad you ordered this.
- Felicia Lacalle is a born and raised Tampan,
and an accomplished chef.
Cubanos are a personal treat for her,
and her very favorite one can be found at Aguila,
an unassuming sandwich joint in West Tampa.
- Aguila is a restaurant that I've been coming to
since I was a little girl.
Mayito knows you, he knows what you already have,
everyone comes and has a regular.
"Are you having a regular?"
you can hear it.
It's soul food, it's dope, it's delicious,
whatever the case may be, you know?
That's what we want.
- That's fantastic.
I mean there's so much meat in here,
but then that plate is just perfect.
- It is perfect.
You have the sweetness, you have the saltiness,
the creaminess, the texture, it's just amazing.
It's delicious.
- I immediately went back for a second bite.
I couldn't help myself here.
- I feel ya, this is a treat.
- You go to Miami.
Miami has the glitz, the glamor, they've got TV shows
about them, everyone knows Miami,
but Tampa was the originator of a very important part
of Cuban cuisine in America.
Do you feel like Tampa doesn't always get its due?
- It doesn't, because a lot of people think, "okay, Tampa",
but that's where it came.
- But Tampa's where it found its identity.
- It did find its identity, for sure.
- Identity. What gives a city its identity?
Like the Cuban sandwich itself,
it's a concept that seems simple enough,
until you start pulling back the layers.