Pickles don’t make the Cuban
Pickles are terrible, and they shouldn’t be the super-majority of a fine sandwich.
A Cuban sandwich, or Cubano, is a delightful concoction. It’s fried cuban bread, pork, ham, mustard, and cheese then smashed into a pleasing flat shape. They also typically come with pickles, unless you think pickles are terrible — in which case you get them without pickles. A problem arises when you get a Cuban sandwich without pickles at work.
“That’s not a Cuban sandwich. It doesn’t have pickles.”
Now normally, you’d be like, “Well. of course, it is.” Apparently, this is a really heated topic, specifically with Cuban sandwiches. Here’s the thing, all you pickle-likers, you’re wrong.
Here’s why.
This is a reductionist sandwich philosophy. The wonder of the Cuban sandwich is the interoperability of all the ingredients. This is true for ANY sandwich. A sandwich should be able to function as a type of sandwich with the removal or addition of a couple of the ingredients (so long as they don’t exceed 50% change to the core recipe, this is science) and still be the same sandwich. If you don’t like tomatoes, and you get a club sandwich without them, are you still getting a club? Yes.
We’re creating a separate class of vegetable by saying that the pickle is a super-item. No one vegetable should be able to claim right to this. Havoc ensues. If the pickle is synonymous with the Cuban sandwich and removing it somehow removes its Cuban-ness, then any sandwich that has pickles must by logic become a Cuban. What world is that? What world, sir?
Let’s take a step back. Using the complete infallibility of Wikipedia, the origin of the Cuban sandwich arose in the 1800s as a worker’s sandwich in both Key West and Cuba proper, migrating north as cigar manufacturing did. Castro’s Cuban exile in the 60s allowed the sandwich to follow its immigrant population.
According to the totally scientific single answer on Quora, ‘Is a pickle essential to a Cubano?’ then no:
Pickled food is not very popular in Cuba. I think this is because of the island’s climate. I guess there is no need to pickle stuff when you have summer all year round.
Now if your question was about “a pickle” as in a complicated situation, I guess it’s not something Cuban people look for. Cuban people usually try to make most of things and live as easy as possible.
There’s some quality of life questions here that exceed the scope of the article, but it does raise an interesting point. Are pickles and by extension pickled food popular in Cuba? Let’s examine. The hopefully much more thoroughly-sourced Dallas Observer article — that I found by searching Google and clicking on the first article — points out that the “Cuban” we’re familiar with originates in Florida (hey, points to Wikipedia!). In Cuba, this sandwich doesn’t exist.
…the Cubano as served in Havana is actually called a “sandwich mixto,” and will probably consist of cuts of either pork or ham, the two meats never sharing the bill on the same sandwich, together with watery mustard, dismal government bread, and generic, Swiss-like cheese. And good luck finding pickles!
(Worth pointing out that the Dallas Observer guy seems to have just done an internet search as well, as he points to another site as his source)
You could argue at this point that the “Cuban” that requires pickles is the American one, which is fine and resets our argument, but hold on. Apparently there are a lot of regional and restaurant variations on what’s inside — including mayo, lettuce, and tomatoes. People buy these sandwiches. (“Who in God’s name wants warm pressed lettuce?” is another question that should be asked.)
As consumers, our only voice is to vote with our wallets. These restaurants must sell sandwiches this way, meaning people identify these as Cubans. When this humble author ordered a Cuban without pickles, the sandwich bar (Bunk, for what it’s worth), didn’t say no or that they didn’t know what that is because it wasn’t a Cuban. In short because I ordered a Cuban. Without pickles. And it was good.
Lest we forget, cucumbers are horrible too.
