All Hail The Cuban Sandwich! [Festival Celebrates Tampa’s Iconic Food This Weekend In Ybor City]

Posted May 24, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated May 24, 2012 at 10:48 AM

As far as Tampa native Victor Padilla is concerned, his grandmother Dona Aurelia made the best Cuban sandwich in the world.

After slow-roasting the mojo-marinated pork for hours and gently baking the ham for almost as long as it took to raise the pig, she would dress the sandwich with traditional Swiss cheese and then add only the best Genoa salami. A few pickle slices and mustard would find its way inside. Surrounding all of it was a loaf of Cuban bread from La Segunda Central Bakery in Ybor City.

“She would put a little butter on the inside of the bread and on the outside, but not too much, before she pressed it,” says Padilla, who is vice president of Latin Times magazine. “It was always a golden brown on the crust. It was perfection.”

Pursuit of the ultimate Cuban sandwich inspired Padilla and Latin Times publisher Jolie Gonzalez to create a festival glorifying the tropical delicacy in its Ybor City birthplace.

The day-long event Saturday in Centennial Park will feature more than 30 restaurants, some from as far away as Miami, making their versions of the classic sandwich. All will be vying for the title of Best Cuban in the traditional and non-traditional categories.

“We started promoting it in October on social media and people went crazy over it,” Padilla says “It took off like a rocket. We started getting calls and messages on Facebook saying ‘You need to put this sandwich shop and this restaurant in the festival.’ ”

Festival planning began late last year, long before a Miami Herald article in April that mocked Tampa City Council’s adoption of the Cuban as the city’s official sandwich.

The turf war escalated after Miami’s Mayor Tomas Regalado, a Cuban exile, told a reporter that salami didn’t belong in the Cubano.

“Tampa certainly has a tradition, but salami is for pizza,” the Herald quoted him saying.

Civic pride has attracted big names to judge this weekend’s contest. Celebrity judges scheduled to attend include Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor, State Rep. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, and Columbia Restaurant president Richard Gonzmart.

The festival also will feature artists, a cigar and café area, antique cars, barbers offering shaves and a play area for children, as well as the offerings found weekly at the Saturday Market in Centennial Park.

Padilla says the passions the sandwich stirs are understandable.

“The ingredients represent the history of Tampa and the people from different countries who have migrated here,” he says.

“The salami represents the Italians. Jewish immigrants brought the pickles. Germans put the cheese on it. It’s a conglomeration of different countries. It’s not only the taste.”

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MUST CHEW LIST

This got me thinking about a list of Cubans that locals absolutely had to try.

There are lots to choose from. Here are some of my favorites:

The Columbia Restaurant – In Ybor City’s earliest days, The Columbia had a window along Seventh Avenue where customers could drive up and get a sandwich. You can still get a taste of those years with a Cuban (pictured above) made according to an old family recipe that includes imported salami with peppercorns.

Brocato’s Sandwich Shop – Patience during hectic lunchtime hours at this landmark on East Columbus Drive pays off in the form of aircraft carrier-size Cubans that easily could feed two people. Get a stuffed potato or a devil crab and take the leftovers home.

West Tampa Sandwich Shop – The warm and sometimes raucous neighborhood West Tampa atmosphere is as delicious as the sandwich. Be sure to order a bowl of garbanzo bean soup and get an empanada with picadillo to share at the table.

Interbay Meat Market – MacDill-area diners know this South Tampa neighborhood market for its meaty, crispy Cubans and perfectly sloppy cheeseburgers. Sit on the picnic benches outside and enjoy your meal. You won’t be able to resist eating before you get to your car.

La Cubanita – If you like your Cuban with a more of that drippy, succulent, delicious roast pork, the Alex Special at this eatery’s locations on Lumsden Road in Brandon and on Lithia Pinecrest Road in Valrico will hit the spot. Bring a bib and extra napkins. Yes, I know the photo shows it with lettuce. It was a phase I was going through.

Wright’s Gourmet House – A six-time champion of the Tampa Tribune’s best Cuban sandwich contest, this sandwich features seasoned, roasted pork, ham, Genoa salami, turkey breast, pickles and Jarlsberg cheese with mustard. (Photo by Todd Sturtz of TastingTampa.com)

I asked readers for their favorite Cuban sandwich spots:

‏@Santos_Dat_Dude – “Roberts Meats, 3435 S. West Shore Blvd., Tampa.”

@jenjenjen731 – “Aguila Sandwich Shop off Hillsborough Avenue. (pictured at the top) There’s a reason that place is always packed. Also, Mambo’s Cafe off Armenia Avenue.”

‏@buccobruce83 – “The Konvenient Food Mart at South Himes Avenue and Cherokee Avenue in South Tampa! Great Cuban sammich!”

@KeepDwightGirl – “Alessi Bakery in Tampa.”

‏@JulesBTV – “Arco Iris on Columbus Avenue in Tampa.”

‏@MJH3bucs – “The Floridian on Treasure Island.”

@JoeBucsFan – “La Teresita on Columbus Avenue in Tampa.

@LorieBriggs – “Silver Ring Café in Riverview, La Septima in Brandon and, surprisingly, Subs N Such in Lutz.”

@StPeteFoodie – “La Ideal Sandwich Shop in West Tampa.”

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And now, the details:

CUBAN SANDWICH FESTIVAL

Where: Centennial Park, 1800 E. Eighth Ave., Tampa

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday

Tickets: Free

Info: http://latin-times.com

RELATED:

* Foodspotting’s guide to the Cuban Sandwich Festival (Link)

* Rebuilding the perfect Cuban sandwich (Link)

* All Hail The Cuban Sandwich gallery on Pinterest (Link)

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Anyone For Road Snapper? [Chef Ben Sargent Visits In Key West On “Hook, Line & Dinner.”]

Posted May 10, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated May 10, 2012 at 03:15 PM

Ben Sargent has a great gig.

Best known for the successful underground lobster roll business he operated from his Brooklyn basement apartment, Sargent is also the host of “Hook, Line & Dinner” Thursday nights on Cooking channel..

Growing up in Cambridge, Mass., Sargent developed a love of fishing with his grandfather off the coast of Cape Cod. He remembers hooking into a striper at age 4 or 5 that was almost as big as he was.

In 2001 he opened “Hurricane Hopeful,” a Williamsburg seafood restaurant which featured his famous chowders & lobster rolls.

In 2010, Ben began hosting a weekly radio show called ‘Catch IT, Cook IT & Eat IT.’ He also has appeared on Food Network’s “Throwdown with Bobby Flay” and on Cooking Channel’s “United Tastes of America.”

An episode he shot in Key West premiers at 8 p.m. tonight on Cooking Channel.

During the episode, Sargent meets Bobby Mongelli, Hogfish Bar and Grill’s chef and owner, who takes him out to the marina to catch some fresh hogfish for their popular hogfish sandwich. Sargent then goes fishing for grouper with commercial fisherman Brian Bennett, who does most of his fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, before joining Doug Shook, the head chef at Louie’s Backyard for 25 years, to cook a dish from his repertoire.

I recorded a Table Conversations podcast with Sargetnt recently about his visit. We also talked about how easy it can be to make fresh-caught fish taste great.

Here’s an excerpt:

Had you ever fished in Key West before shooting the show?

No. I hadn’t. It’s a cool marriage of sort of like artists, really funky people mixed in with blue-collar, die-hard fisherman. And they all seem to get along. I was amazed.

Writer Randy Wayne White, who is a former commercial fisherman, once called Key West “a drunk hatchery.”

Exactly.

What were you told to prepare for when fishing there? You were going for grouper and hogfish, correct?

Yeah, It’s just a real different type of fishing than what I’m used to. Most times, I’m fishing with plugs in shallow water, so that was all new to me. That initial struggle, when a fish hits and pounds you, it startles you. It’s a little different. What I didn’t understand was that when you get a snapper deep down, the mutton snapper I caught, you have 20 to 30 seconds and if that fish beats you and tangles your line, you’ve lost. Because it makes a bee-line for the bottom and you’re tangled in the rocks. Then you’re basically fighting rocks..

Our fishing here [in Massachusetts] there’s a little more leeway. Sometimes if you’re not on it right away, you can still get away with it. That’s not the case there.

I dug that you showed yourself throwing up over the side when you got seasick. Most fishing shows don’t show anyone getting sick or when they get a bird’s nest in the reel.

Thanks. Unfortunately, everyone else seems to like it, too. They make sure now to put me in the most horrific conditions so I can make a fool of myself. Usually two things are happening. I’m puking over the side of the boat and

I’m not catching any fish, which makes it a very true to life show. It’s the only fishing show that admits we get skunked sometimes.

You pulled up two mutton snapper and went back to shore to prepare them. A lot of people are intimidated by cooking fish because they think, “Oh, I don’t know how to filet a fish well.” But you had a great preparation from Louie’s Backyard restaurant.

That was Chef Doug. He is a master of the banana leaf. The crew was really angry at me because I took my motorcycle around. The first thing I did was tie the mutton snapper with a bag of ice on the back of my motorcycle and I hooked up a camera to get that shot. One of the snappers fell off the back of the bike and didn’t make it to chef Doug. We don’t know what happened to it because some lucky guy on the side of the road probably saw it on the side of the road and went home and cooked it for his family. We went back to look for it and couldn’t’ find it. You’ll see that in the episode.

You accidentally invented a new term: “Road snapper.”

They were probably confused about how it got there. We were a mile away from the coast.

Doug suggested – and this is his big thing because he like poaching off his neighbor’s property – using any key limes or banana laves that happen to hang into his property, or the restaurant’s property. He sees that as fair game.

We wrapped that fish in banana leaves. It’s like a foolproof way of cooking. Even if it’s undercooked, it’s still steaming and still cooking. All you have to do is scale the fish. Actually, you don’t even have to do that because you’re eating it off the bone from the inside out. You do have to gut the fish, because it imparts a gross flavor. But it looks so fancy and is so easy to do.

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Here’s the recipe for that dish he mentioned:

Whole Mutton Snapper with Mango Salsa

One 3 to 5-pound mutton snapper, scaled, gutted and gills removed
1 banana leaf
3 bunches fresh cilantro, stemmed and chopped
3 yellow onions, sliced
3 pickled jalapenos, sliced, plus 3 tablespoons pickled jalapeno juice
Kosher salt
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup Key lime juice (or regular lime juice)
Mango Salsa, (recipe follows)
Tortillas, warmed, for serving, optional

For the mango salsa:
1/4 cup lime juice, plus more to taste
1 mango, diced
1 red onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 serrano chile, diced
1 yellow bell pepper, diced
Kosher salt, to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Carefully score the fish in a diamond pattern using a sharp knife, making sure not to cut through the flesh entirely.

Lay the banana leaf across the center of a large roasting pan or casserole so that the excess falls over either side of the pan. Place a third each of the cilantro, onions and jalapenos on top. Sprinkle the inside of the fish with salt, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and a handful of onion slices. Lay the fish on the onion bed and top with the remaining cilantro, onions, jalapenos, olive oil, the jalapeno juice and lime juice. Wrap the excess banana leaf over the fish and tuck under to close. Cover the entire roasting pan with foil.

Cook the fish in the oven until a skewer inserted into the fish meets no resistance, 45 minutes. Unwrap the banana leaf and serve family-style with the Mango Salsa. Pass around warm tortillas to fill with snapper and salsa, if using.

Toss together the lime juice, mango, onion, bell peppers and chiles in a medium mixing bowl. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and more lime juice as needed.

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Banana Bourbon Caramel Cheesecake, Boiled Crawfish, Mussels & Clams [This Week’s Weekend Eats]

Posted May 8, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated May 8, 2012 at 01:10 PM

You guys don’t make it easy.

Every week I ask for readers, friends, followers, disciples, apostles, playas, haters, nay I say anyone, to send me photos of their best food consumed on the weekend.

And every week they get more and more delicious looking.

Like that special little assemblage of food above.

That one was sent by my Twitter friend @Bralio, who, as the photo clearly shows, enjoyed a plate of roasted balsamic pear and walnut balsamic salad at Chill restaurant on St. Pete Beach.

That’s not to say that there weren’t extremely worthy contenders. I received not one but TWO crawfish, corn and potato boils. There was caramel cheesecake, for goodness sake. It’s just that Bralio’s dish made me lean my head to the side and think, “Oooh, I haven’t seen THAT before.”

I also said, “GET ME TO CHILL RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT.”

Ahem.

For his tasty submission - which, in retrospect, sounds much dirtier than I had planned - Bralio will receive this lovely parting gift:

Cindy Pawlcyn’s new book, “Cindy’s Supper Club; Meals From Around The World to Share With Family And Friends.”

You may know Cindy from her appearance on “Top Chef Masters,” as well as being one hellaciously great Napa Valley chef.

What was the other competition this week?

@Nel_Bringsjord - Vichysoisse vol au vent, fruits de mer avec poulet, chocolate biscuits. @cafeLargo

@fsutoby - Delicious Peanut Butter Banana shake from Steak and Shake. SO good

@otmdish - Salt cod fritters w lamb sausage ragu & curry aioli—that’s one dish (at Recette). Oddly works.

For delicious pics which will make your eyes drool, check out this week’s Gallery of Noms (click on each photo to get a description):

 

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‘You Have To Fall In Love With Your Work’ [Run - Don’t Walk - To See ‘Jiro Dreams Of Sushi’]

Posted Apr 25, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 25, 2012 at 01:12 PM

Had a chance to watch an amazing documentary yesterday on Jiro Ono, the most famous sushi chef in Tokyo.

I’ll let the trailer info take it from here:

For most of his 85 years, Jiro has been perfecting the art of making sushi. He works from sunrise to well beyond sunset to taste every piece of fish; meticulously train his employees; and carefully mold and finesse the impeccable presentation of each sushi creation. Although his restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro only seats ten diners, it is a phenomenon in Tokyo that has won the prestigious 3-Star Michelin review, making him the oldest Michelin chef alive.

“Jiro Dreams of Sushi” chronicles Jiro’s life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world, and as a loving yet complicated father of two.

Jiro’s incomparable work ethic is the driving force behind “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” but the heart of this film is how that ambition has influenced his sons’ lives as well. Eldest son Yoshikazu is the heir apparent to the sushi empire, but Jiro is not ready to retire or to relinquish any of his responsibilities. With a famous father guiding and critiquing every decision, Yoshikazu is unable to reach his fullest potential. However, he is proud to learn from a true sushi master, thus revealing the inner struggle of how a dutiful son shows reverence to his father yet control over his own domain.

“Jiro Dreams of Sushi” explores the passion required to run and maintain a legendary sushi restaurant, and one son’s journey to eventually take his father’s place at the head of the culinary dynasty.

The movie is playing at 7:30 p.m. tonight and Thursday at the exquisite Tampa Theater in downtown Tampa.

Want a sample? Here’s the trailer:

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‘Massaging Nature As A Lover’ [Farmer Joel Salatin Preaches The Gospel Of Local Food In Tampa]

Posted Apr 18, 2012 by Jeff Houck

Updated Apr 18, 2012 at 04:46 PM

Joel Salatin sees himself as more than a farmer.

He’s healing the earth, one cow, pig, rabbit and chicken at a time.

For too long, he says, food in the United States has come from industrial farms that have cut the cord between Americans and organic food sources.

On his Polyface farm in Swoope, Va., Salatin says he attempts to link the two by using farming practices that not only put wholesome ingredients on the table, but also restore ecological balance to his 550 acres in the Shenandoah Valley.

Salatin will discuss his views on organic, sustainable farming at 8 p.m. Thursday at The Roosevelt 2.0 in Ybor City. The event, which includes a sold-out dinner, is produced by Tampa Urban Food Forum (TUFF).

Salatin became a celebrity farmer of sorts among those in the local-food movement in 2006, after being featured in food writer Michael Pollan‘s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” as well as the documentary “Food, Inc.”

“He’s the first farmer I’ve seen who actually connects with people,” says TUFF co-founder Robin Milcowitz.

“We have a quickly growing local food movement that needs to come together,” Milcowitz says. “He can inspire people to keep doing what they’re doing.”

Salatin, 54, began working full-time on his parents’ farm in 1982, using bio-diverse methods for raising livestock.

The farm now serves more than 3,000 families and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with beef, pastured poultry, eggs, pork, rabbits and turkeys.

Here’s a glimpse of the farm. As you’ll see, Joel’s a little excitable:

I had a chance recently to speak with him about his approach to farming and how he tries to bridge the divide between the farm and the family table:

Florida has a year-round growing calendar, but it could not be more disconnected from farm to table in a lot of ways. You talk about the disconnection, but why is it continuing so strongly considering how visible that cause is right now.

As a civilization we kind of lost our mornings, if you will. We lost our ecological umbilical during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, with our love affair with everything mechanical and industrial. We even quit breast-feeding our babies. We made TV dinners. We essentially put our faith in Procter & Gamble and DiGiorno frozen pizza.

We essentially as a culture left those historical anchors, we lost those cultural moorings. Here we are in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, and you have the Mother Earth News and Back to the Land Movement, the beaded-bearded-braless revolution of Woodstock. Then you had La Leche and Lamaze and people started saying wait, maybe some of these heritage umbilicals are anchors that are important. You can only embrace technology so far, but it does not give you the social anchorings and soul-level anchorings.

The local-food tsunami is very much a ground-upswell of rediscovering this lost ground. But this institutional food sector – the restaurants, the colleges – are still completely immersed in the old industrial paradyme which is about concrete and size, high-energy. It floats on oil and cheap energy and it floats on a mechanical view of life as opposed to a biological view of life.

Because it is the largest ship in the fleet, it takes it the longest to turn around. You can turn around in your backyard pretty quick, but a fast-food franchise if hard to turn around. It’s a big aircraft carrier. It takes a while.

Does your vantage point as a farmer give you a unique connection to the land? You see things every day that people who sit in the office don’t see.

It is a vantage point, because I’m out there with calluses and dirt under the fingernails. For example, I’m looking at the landscape thinking, “How do you create a less energy intensive, more resiliant, more forgiving landscape?’ There are principals involved in that. One is that you need a diversified production. Nature does not go toward monocrops or monospeciaition and synergy between plants and animals. So you don’t have acres and acres of one single animal.

Another is the hydrology cycle. How do you insulate from floods and droughts and things like that? We want to manage water so that rain drops stay as close to where they fall for as long as possible. That can be accomplished lots of different ways, from a rain barrel under your downspout, to increasing the organic matter in soil.

These are very visceral principals and patterns in nature that I see and work with every day and allows me to bring something to this discussion that isn’t just an academic and cerebral book learning from the local university.

I imagine you have moments where you think, “I wish people could see what I see.”

Oh, no question.

I think one of the main things is to be surrounded and embedded in the myriad of beings that we call nature or ecology. It’s profound to realize that the world does nto revolve around me. I am just one part of this great community of beings that is dancing together. How can I participate in this in a way that massages everybody into health, vigor and vitality beyond what they would have if I were not here. We have this notion of culture today that the best thing we can do today for the land is to abandon it and get rid of the human element because the human destroys everything. We ought to abandon the landscape to the trees and the foxes and everything will be fine. That doesn’t sound like a high-moral road to me. It’s a tough sell. So I can ask, “Why am I here and why do I have a big brain and the ability to heal and exploit so profoundly?”

I suggest that the answer is that I’m supposed to use my creativity and this big brain and opposing thumb to use this to massage the environment and ecology into greater solar conversion into decomposable biomass than it would in a static state. That’s a mouthful but it’s physics; that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. At the very time in human civilization when we have the most efficient ability to destroy the ecology, we also have the most efficient ability to heal the ecology. I am not a luddite by any means. What I want to do is leverage the technology we have, not to prostitute, adulterate or continue to exploit and rape nature but to massage nature as a lover because if we do, nature will love us back more than we could dream of.

We have to study nature for the patterns throughout history so we can leverage them.

You came back to farming full-time in 1982, when it was a must different culture. We’ve come a long way since then in thinking about farms, almost in the way chefs were elevated in the past 10 to 15 years. Farmers are almost coming into their own as the new rock stars.

You have hit the nail on the head. I have this conversation all the time. When I was growing up, Julia Child was the only chef I had ever heard of. Now of course we have food channels and celebrity chefs all over the place. I do believe that the next permutation of that theme is going to be the celebrity farmer or the idea of people putting that farmer on a pedest5al as a patron saint of health and landscape caretaking.

Paint the scene for me. What was it like back then when you came back to the farm? It was a hidden profession in a lot of ways, I imagine.

Certainly it was. Let’s not kid ourselves, it still is. We still have twice as many people incarcerated in prison in our civilization as we do farming. That’s not very many eyes and ears interacting with out sustenance. Actually taking care of our landscape.

Back then the biggest difference was that the food laws were not as onerous as they were today. The food safety laws are prejudicial against small-scale innovation. They scale up well but they don’t scale down very well. Most of the price issues and access to market issues that are impediments in the local food system are simply arbitrary hurdles created by an industrial food system.

The second thing is, in those 30 years, our farm business has personally seen a profound, continued culinary ignorance in the culture. Thirty years ago you almost couldn’t find a boneless skineless breast in the grocery store. If you wanted one, you bought a chicken, you took it home and had boneless skinless breasts. Today, half our customers don’t know that a chicken has bones. It’s some sort of breasts that you pick off a tree somewhere.

So there is an incredible, profound culinary ignorance that is way deeper. Back then, almost all our customers had gardens. Yes, they are coming back now, but boy, there is a profound lack of understanding in the system.

The third change is the electronic media, the whole Facebook and Web site is a thing developed for globalization that has been co-opted by the localization movement. There is real-time communication between ideological tribes that is more efficient than anything we could have ever imagined. It’s allowing this kind of network to occur in a much better way than ever possible.

Do you find it an odd fit at all that you’re seen as the patron saint of good farming?

It’s not a role that I’ve aspired to, but I take very seriously this mantle I’ve been given as an ambassador for local food, ecological farms and food freedom and food choice. Those, of course, are my themes. I lie awake at night trying to conceive of better sound bites that will be more clever and humorous to make the message more enjoyable. It’s a big deal

I certainly am not the be-all and end-all, but I do take it very seriously that I’ve been thrust onto this platform and I’m thrilled to death that so many people want to come and hear.

Standing-room tickets for Salatin’s appearance at The Roosevelt 2.0, 1812 N.15th St. in Tampa, are available for $35. They can be ordered online at http://www.realfoodrealjoel.com.

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