Cuban food

[anotheruser]

Tell me your experience with Cuban food.

[spidermike007]

When I used to stay in Havana, I would rent an apartment in Miramar. Women would come around selling bags of lobster tail, on ice. I once bought a few kilos of it. Sautéed a kilo of lobster, in a wok, with some peppers, onions, garlic, etc. It was spectacularly delicious, and super fresh. A heaping platter of lobster tail! I then cooked up a pot of beans and rice. And invited over several Cuban friends. Half said they loved lobster, and could not wait to have some. The other half said they hated lobster, and asked me if I had any white bread and mayonnaise. Believe it or not, white bread with mayonnaise is considered a sandwich in Cuba. That tells you how atrocious the food is. The choice of that over lobster tail, tells you something else entirely. I have stopped at roadside restaurants, in the countryside, where all they had to eat was white bread with mayonnaise, or french fries. That was all they had! Period. Nothing else!

[curtklay]

Well, I don't know about white bread and mayonnaise, but the Cuban sandwiches I used to eat in Miami looked more like this, and they were fantastic!

[Jingthing]

Interesting history of Cuban sandwiches.

It appears they got "pimped up" in the USA in a similar way as basic Mexican burritos became something amazing in the USA.

But in this case Florida instead of California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_sandwich

It is believed by some that the sandwich was a common lunch food for workers in both the cigar factories and sugar mills of Cuba (especially in big cities such as Havana or Santiago de Cuba) and the cigar factories of Key West by the 1860s.^[1] Historian Loy Glenn Westfall states that the sandwich was "born in Cuba and educated in Key West."

The cigar factory angle interests me personally. My relatives first entered the new world in Cuba where they were all thrown in jail directly from the ship. A relative of mine even worked for some years as a cigar factory girl (not the Monica Lewinski kind). Very La Boheme!

BTW, for those in Pattaya, Pastrami and Rye Jomtien does a really EXCELLENT Cuban sandwich, Tampa Florida style (see the link).

[curtklay]

Almost all foreign food gets "Americanized" in the states. It's a good thing, since many of the original recipes don't appeal to the Western palate. The best Thai food I've eaten was in California.

[tutsiwarrior]

beans and rice with a piece of bread at lunch when yer workin' and a cold refresco...common thru out the region...

the preparation of both varies a bit...with the beans yer lucky if yer get a bit of lard and the raw rice is cooked first with onions and garlic...with either bread or a fat flour tortilla depending on local custom...

the 'fresco is clean water with fruit juice and loads of sugar...and cold...if it ain't cold then the cook loses his job...

[worgeordie]

Believe it or not there is a Cuban restaurant opening up here in Chiang Mai,

have no idea what the food will be like,just hope its not white bread and mayonnaise.

regards worgeordie

[RichCor]

have no idea what the food will be like,just hope its not white bread and mayonnaise.

Real mayonnaise is too expensive, so they'll probably use some god-awful sandwich spread.

Also... Thais would never go for mayonnaise (or sandwich spread) on a piece of bread. That's what Ice Cream is for.