Cubano? More like “Cubanwhoa!” Amirite?
Florida doesn’t have the best reputation as a state. In non-pandemic times, they’re perhaps best known for things like drugged-out humans eating each others faces. Or questionable election results. Or having a snake problem so bad that the population of wildlife in the everglades is heavily diminishing year after year.
In these unprecedented and uncertain times, they’re perhaps most notorious for being one of the states full of enough idiots who refuse to socially distance or wear a mask that Covid-19 numbers are skyrocketing.
But just like family, we can’t choose the states that currently make up the United States of America (I mean, mostly). And just because a lot of crazy comes out of Florida doesn’t mean good things don’t emerge from the Sunshine State. I mean, c’mon, there’s Disney World. And Miami beaches. And the first four seasons of Dexter. And the Cuban sandwich.
Since this is a blog very specifically about sandwiches — even more specifically (for now), sandwiches found on this list — we’ll focus on that last one, shall we?
Now, I’ve seen this sandwich on menus before, I’ve just never been inclined to order them. I think I was a girl who “knew what she liked” and defaulted to the sandwiches that had turkey or bacon or turkey and bacon. So, like most sandwiches on the list, this sandwich was going to be a new taste experience for me. Luckily, the description alone seemed pretty delicious.
For those who don’t know, the Cuban (or Cubano) sandwich is described as, “Chewy Cuban bread smothered with layers of ham, roast pork, pickles, and swiss cheese.” Upon further research, it appears that the traditional Cubano also has yellow mustard, French or Italian bread can be used in a pinch if you can’t find Cuban bread, and the pork can be either sliced pork tenderloin or shredded pork shoulder.
We had a few decisions made for us on the outset. First, we couldn’t find Cuban bread at either Ralph’s, Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s. We did find one Cuban bakery within forty-five minutes of us, but their online menu is limited due to Covid-19 and it wasn’t clear if they just sold Cuban bread or just Cuban treats. So, we opted for a French-type roll instead. We could tell that it wasn’t going to have the chewy texture that Cuban bread would bring to the table, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances.
Pork shoulder also wasn’t available at the stores we went to, but Pork Tenderloin was. And since it was a valid option, we took the easy way out on that one.
Much like Delaware’s sandwich, we started the prep on this one the day before. I placed the pork tenderloin in a homemade Mojo marinade on Saturday morning, giving it a full 24-hour marinade bath before roasting it on Sunday. But unlike the Delaware sandwich, that was the extent of the “hard work” needed for this sandwich.
Come dinner time, this sandwich — which seems complicated if you look at a cross-section cut, or even just read the ingredients list — came together very fast in our one-and-a-half-man assembly line (I was holding a toddler, so wasn’t as efficient an assembly line worker as one would aspire to be). Figuring out the pork was the hardest part, and that was incredibly easy.
Toasted bread, mustard, swiss, pork loin, swiss, pickles, ham, and — if you care to — more swiss. Press those puppies in a panini press (or just a heavy, preheated castiron skillet if you’re us and don’t have a panini press because you’re just not that fancy), and BOOM. You have a Cubano sandwich ready to eat.
Now, we were snacking on the unused pork loin while these puppies got smooshed by the cast iron, and that alone was delicious. So I had high hopes heading into that first bite.
I was not disappointed. It was salty and mildly citrusy with the right amount of sourness from the pickles and pungent oomph from the mustard. The melty swiss cheese is always a bonus and the bread, while not ideal, was an excellent pinch-hitter.
In our assembly-line efficiency, we made four sandwiches in total. Halfway through our first one, we both agreed that no more sandwich was necessary. This was a satisfying sandwich. If you eat this, you’re not going to be arbitrarily rooting through the cupboards for a snack later. You will be good to call eating a night when you’re done with it.
We were very pleased with these. Very pleased. Like, very pleased. We’re two months into this experiment we call Sandwich Sundays, and the list had some real bummers on the offset, like this one, or (in hindsight) this one, or this one, which to be fair tasted fine, but c’mon Colorado. You can do better.
This one, though, was a real contender for the top spot. It was (relatively) easy, it was tasty and satisfying. And honestly, we found it to be forgiving to the layperson. We thought ours could use more mustard, maybe less swiss than we used, we recognized that the bread we used wasn’t ideal, and in a perfect world, we would have used an actual panini press on these. But even with all that in mind, they were fucking delicious.
Still, even taking into account our newbie errors, we still decided that the Connecticut Lobster Roll is the current top d̶o̶g̶ sandwich. But this one was very close. And if the world ever goes back to normal and we get invited to a tailgate or sports-related potluck party, we will be bringing a bunch of these and then will happily collect our “best potluck dish of the world” prize before we leave.
So, good job, Florida. You have a long way to go, but boy are you represented by a tasty sandwich.
