I’m about as far away from Cuba and Florida as one can get so this history is enlightening.
A sandwich that’s not very common in the PNW.
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I absolutely adore a good Cuban, a sandwich I was also not familiar with until a friend in FL introduced us. Glad she did, as that is some good eats 
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The details about the bread are awesome!
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Ive been living near Tampa most of my life. This sanguiche is a staple. And I have been to and love all the cafes they mention.
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Seems it is woven into the fabric of the town, like a mission burrito out here.
Had no idea about the bread either, as @ElsieDee said.
Have you tried the Miami version?
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Yes, but Andy Huse, who wrote an entire book about our beloved sandwich, says the historical evidence says that the Cuban sandwich originated here in Tampa.
They make it without salami here, too.
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I’m sorry, but… SALAMI?
Wut!
Thanks for sharing the article — I would never have come across it!
I wonder if there were a specific restaurant in each place that claimed credit for invention, would they be in a court battle like the butter chicken folks in India 
— instead of the very mature “Although Tampa and Miami frequently bicker over which is the “home of the Cuban sandwich,” Huse maintains there was never a Frankenstein moment when someone piled a combination of meats and other ingredients between slices of bread, pressed it in an old plancha , christened it a “Cuban,” and sent it staggering out into the world.
The story of the bread was lovely, and very reminiscent of a story someone posted a while back about banh mi rolls .
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GREAT article and awesome looking bread. I think I’ve read something by Huse on the history of the sandwich and Tampa/Ybor City has been on my tourism list for a few years.
Cuban food has not impressed me much in the past and the sandwich in particular. A few years back though, while visiting a relative in Baytown (far east side), I spotted a Cuban cafe in a rundown/almost vacant shopping center and decided to try it. A family from Tampa had relocated to Baytown and opened the cafe and were serving the Tampa version of the sandwich. I loved it with the salami - really made it a much better sandwich for my taste. The sandwich was actually very pressed down unlike most places here that seem to ignore that step. There was a sign on the wall for La Segunda and I looked it up and thought they were even using the bread from there. However, the sign has not been apparent on subsequent visits and the bread, while good, doesn’t look as good as the pictures in that article so I guess it was just decoration.
The place is always doing a good business and the food smells wonderful. I want to get over there sometime and try something else. I’ve read that other members of the family have opened another location in a different far east-side suburb.
Meanwhile, I found a place way out in Katy on the westside that bakes Cuban bread fresh, daily (made with lard) and I’ve made some pretty good samples of the sandwich at home. It’s an hour and a half trip and the sandwich loaves are gone pretty early in the day, though, so not often.
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Now I wanna hit up the Cuban sandwich and empanada festival in Kissimmee! Only 8ish hrs away 
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In Ybor City, yes. There is still a heavy Sicilian contingent in the largely Cuban neighborhood ans so the food reflects the blend of flavors and cultures …to rhe point that the local paper (La Gaceta) is thr only trilingual newspaper in the country…Spanish, Italian. And English.
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Noooooo…
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Ive never bought the Tampa origin theory for the main reason that the Cubans who immigrated directly to the NY metro area (and there were many of them) brought their cuban sandwiches with them. in the 70s I was taken by a young cuban man to a resto of his emigree relatives in Washington Heights NYC who showed us pictures of Fidel Castro eating there back in the day; their Cubano was not the version developed in Tampa (or even Miami - no salami, no mustard) it was simpler with the good roast pork, ham cheese and pickle (maybe some mayo?)in common with most of the cubanos we ate in the city back then . These emigres would have cooked their traditional foods from their home place, not a Tampa variant. Thats not to say Tampa does not have an honorable history but its the history of their version of the sandwich, not of the sandwich itself. Food evolves.
even the historian refererenced in the article linked above doesnt believe that its “original” origin was in Tampa
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Ive been eating and and taking guests to the Columbia for 40 years. Its always a delight, the service is always impeccable, and the prices aren’t painful.
Best Cuban? No, but high ranking. They dont press theirs, so its never as good as a toasty, melty, buttery Cuban from one of the dozens of littles holes in the wall that Ive found around the city.
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Quick question. Have you been to La Teresita? I notice in the article you posted upthread the author says it is still a luncheonette/counter service type place. I thought I had read a few years ago that they expanded into a more restaurant-y type place.
If not my favorite, certainly my most nostalgic place down there. Eight hundred years ago('88) when I was at USF I took a young lady there and we ate very well, entrees with soup and sides and with 2 cans of Budweiser for about fifteen bucks. That was cheap, even back then. The cubans were great back then as well, but admittedly I do not recall the salami.
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It’s a little of everything…theres a pickup counter, the diner with the long counter, and a sit-down restaurant on thr other side.
I graduated 87, so apparently 801 years ago😉
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There is a Columbia restaurant directly across the street from where I’m currently living on Sand Key Clearwater beach… The original is in Ybor city Tampa. Met a friend from optometry school who was in town. We had lunch there. I got their Cuban sandwich. A Tampa Cuban has pork and salami as a nod to the Cuban and Jewish merchants that worked and lived in Ybor City Tampa.
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Huh??? Was the sandwich a warning then? Really stay away as two kinds or pork isn’t traif enough, we have 3?
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