Forget Miami or Tampa. The nation’s best Cuban sandwich is in West New York.
So says Food Network personality Carl Ruiz, a Jersey chef who says he has eaten 500 or so Cuban sandwiches in Tampa, Miami and elsewhere. La Pola in West New York, he says, serves up the absolute best, a perfect combination of bread, ham, pork, cheese and mojo or marinade.
Ruiz, former owner of Marie’s Italian Specialties in Chatham, has been a guest on several shows on the Food Network, including Guy’s Grocery Games, Guy’s Ranch Kitchen and Carl’s World: Restaurant Therapy. He also appears on Opie Radio The Podcast.
Ruiz, who plans to open a Cuban restaurant in New York City early next year, says he’s eaten about 500 Cuban sandwiches over the years, many of those in Tampa and Miami, the hotbeds of Cuban culture and food in this country. None of those sandwiches, he says, match the one at La Pola (although he acknowledges that Tampa is "the king of Cuban bread'). La Pola is an old-school haunt on Palisade Avenue with its diner-like counter and stools and just one person making the sandwiches. That’s Belarmino Rico, who opened La Pola in 1978. The restaurant is named after the town in northern Spain where he’s from.
My Twitter photo of the sandwich provoked a heated debate, with many people doubting the best Cuban sandwich could ever come from New Jersey, that they could only come from Tampa or Miami. Even the official Twitter account for the city of Tampa chimed in:
"Yeah, St. Pete and Tampa didn’t like that very much,''' read a broadside from cltampa.com "Both cities - including St. Pete mayor Rick Kriseman - were quick to shoot down the declaration from Carl Ruiz . . .''
"Tampa, St. Petersburg have something to say about the country’s best Cuban,'' read the cltampa headline. The subhead: "The sandwich ain’t found in Jersey, OK?''
What makes La Pola’s Cubano special, according to Ruiz, is the hand-sliced ham and pork, and excellent bread, from Cuba Bakery in Union City. Too often, Cuban sandwiches use pulled pork, which Ruiz considers vastly inferior. And they’re "overmustard-y, over pickle-y.''
"Cuban sandwiches now are pulled pork sandwiches with deli meat on them,'' he explains. "I’m finding these at Cuban restaurants - the number one offender.''
The Cuban sandwich, he says, "wasn’t designed for Cubans. It was designed for tourists in Cuba. As tourists started coming into Cuba, the Cubans said, we’ve got to make sandwiches the Americans like. What do they like? Mustard. What else do they love? They love that sweet ham. And Americans put cheese on their sandwiches. What cheese can we get that we don’t have to refrigerate? Swiss.''
And that, according to Ruiz, is how the Cuban sandwich was born.
At La Pola, you can get a Cubano, with ham, pork and cheese, or an Especial de la Casa, with ham, pork, prosciutto, salami, chorizo and cheese. It might even be better than the Cuban sandwich.
Peter Genovese may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @PeteGenovese or via The Munchmobile @NJ_Munchmobile. Find the Munchmobile on Facebook and Instagram.