MIAMI’S CAFFEINATED CULTURE

WORDS BY JULIETTE GUILBERT PHOTOGRAPHY BY CM GUERRERO

Since arriving in Miami during the ’60s, Cuban- Americans have thrived on their cafecito, or espresso. Take a tour of the best places to grab a cup, and find out about the role of coffee in Cuban culture.

On a warm winter’s day at Rancho Los Cocos (7085 SW 24th St.), fast-paced Dominican merengue provides the soundtrack for shoppers picking up plantains at the fruit stand, chatting in Caribbean- inflected Spanish over mid-morning snacks and inspecting the roast pork, beans and rice, and mariquitas (fresh plantain chips) on offer in the bodega. Rancho Los Cocos, an open-air Latin American mini-bazaar on Miami’s Coral Way, caters to immigrants from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and other Latin American countries, providing them with a congenial place in which to do a little grocery shopping, socialize or pick up some takeout food for dinner. To fuel these endeavors, shoppers line up at a pass-through window next to the parking lot for a shot of Miami’s favorite legal addiction: cafecito.

Cafecito is Cuban espresso, and it is everywhere in Miami, from fine restaurants to humble lunch counters to the snack bar at the city zoo. Cuban restaurants—and lately, Peruvian, Nicaraguan and Colombian joints as well—sell the strong, intensely sweet brew at counters that open onto sidewalks and parking lots all across town. These ventanas de afuera (outside windows) are Miami’s quintessential street-level civic institutions, where locals gather for a quick snack, a shot of espresso and a chat with other customers about Latin American politics or the local weather. When something newsworthy happens in Cuba, TV news vans line up at the ventanas in the Cuban enclave of Little Havana to take the political pulse of the community.

At the window outside La Palma (6091 SW 8th St.), a Cuban restaurant on Calle Ocho, barista Yamile Morales greets customers with a brisk “Digame!” (”Tell me!”). They oblige by ordering up Cuban coffee in its various forms: cafecito (black with sugar—lots of it), cortadito (with sugar and a bit of milk) and café con leche (café au lait, no sugar and lots of milk). Some of Morales’ customers down their coffee and leave, but many order snacks like pastelitos (puff pastry with meat, cream cheese or guava filling) or empanadas (fried meat or fruit pies), and linger a while at the restaurant’s canopied outdoor dining area.

Cuban-born Morales, who has worked at La Palma for seven of the eight years she’s been in the US, claims there’s no special trick to making Cuban coffee. “It’s easy!” she laughs. Like many immigrants, Morales has made the transition to an American life by way of cafecito culture, finding a steady job and social support in an environment where no English or special skills are required.

When the first generation of Cuban exiles started to arrive in Miami in the early ’60s, their coffee wasn’t far behind, according to Felipe Valls Jr., owner of Versailles, the legendary Little Havana restaurant. Valls said that his father brought one of the first espresso machines to Miami, at the very beginning of the Cuban exodus.

“He was working for a restaurant supply company, and he asked them to bring in an Italian or Spanish espresso machine,” Valls says. “They said, ‘No, we haven’t sold one of those in years!’ He told them: ‘Well, you’re about to start!’” Fueled by the influx of homesick exiles, Valls Sr. began to set up and stock “coffee corners” around Little Havana, opened Versailles on Calle Ocho in 1972, and went on to found a local Cuban restaurant empire. Today, his son says, Versailles sells a thousand cups of cafecito through its ventana each day.

For Pablo and Clara Cabal, first-generation Cuban-Americans who came to Miami in the ’60s, cafecito has major cultural significance. Pablo speaks reverently of the quality of Cuban coffee. “It’s about the trouble of obtaining the best coffee in the world, the process of roasting it, the honor and pride of the people who do it,” he says. “It is a tradition rather than a habit.” His wife adds that the social aspect of cafecito is a large part of its appeal: “It’s a ritual to go for a little drive and get coffee. Even at midnight, there is always a group of old Cuban men in front of Versailles talking—that is their life.” And the coffee culture is not limited to the older generation; the Calle Ocho ventanas frequently experience a 3am rush of South Beach club kids stopping for a snack and a jolt of caffeine to keep them awake on the road home.

There is some disagreement about who serves the best cafecito in Miami. The two main contenders are Versailles (3555 SW 8th St.) and La Carreta (3632 SW 8th St.), a local chain with outposts all over town; the ones on Calle Ocho and Bird Road are the most popular. Each restaurant has its adherents, but both are owned by the Valls family. They serve the same custom coffee blend in china tacitas (Cuban demitasse cups) kept warm atop the espresso machine, rather than the Styrofoam cups often encountered elsewhere. After coffee and pastries at one (or both) of these Little Havana landmarks, you can buy a cigar for 25 cents and stroll (or drive) down Calle Ocho to check out another type of Cuban culture repository, the botánicas that sell herbs, figurines and other objects used in the practice of the Afro-Cuban religion, Santer’a.

Any serious coffee tour of Miami will include Calle Ocho, but it can also be rewarding to venture farther afield, not least because it’s an excuse to experience parts of the city that many tourists never see. If you’re passing through the Wynwood neighborhood—an up-and-coming arts district that is home to many galleries and two outstanding private collections (the Rubell Family Collection and the Margulies Collection, both open to the public)—stop in at Enriqueta’s Sandwich Shop (186 NE 29th St.), a cheery Cuban cafeteria. Despite the somewhat desolate-looking surroundings, the well-heeled, the arty and the journalistic (both the Miami Herald and the Miami New Times are located nearby), along with neighborhood mechanics and construction workers, all flock here at lunchtime for the highly- regarded Cuban sandwiches—and often return to the ventana for an afternoon cafecito break. Enriqueta’s is impossible to miss: it is painted an eye-popping shade of persimmon, adorned by forbidding black security bars, and its tiny corner parking lot is always crammed with SUVs.

For perhaps the best Caribbean cultural immersion experience in the city, head out to West Flagler Street (at Red Road) for the pan-Latino culinary wonderland that is El Palacio de Los Jugos (5721 W Flagler St.). Take a seat at one of the canopied picnic tables, sip a 40-cent espresso, and check out the Spanish game shows on TV, the rows of papayas and bundles of sugar cane at the produce stand, and the man hacking open chilled coconuts and sticking straws in them.

This is also a good place for a budget lunch: pollo asado (roast chicken), pan con lechón (pork sandwich), arroz moro (rice cooked with black beans) and other dishes cost about $3 each at the prepared food stalls. The large assortment of fresh-squeezed jugos (juices)—from watermelon to tamarind—are found in the attached corner grocery. El Palacio is hopping on Sundays after church, when you’ll frequently encounter peddlers selling religious icons and toys, as well as fresh fish, and mangoes from their backyard trees.

If your itinerary doesn’t take you beyond Miami Beach, don’t fret: even in this supermodel and celebrity chef-studded environment, a cup of Cuban coffee is never far away. The best-known spots are David’s (1058 Collins Ave.), a lunch counter, and its white tableclothed satellite, David’s II (1654 Meridian Ave.), just off the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall. Both have café windows that attract an intriguing cross-section of South Beach types, from well-muscled beach boys in need of an 11am wake-up colada, to suits on their way to and from the office. But good coffee can also be found in bodegas, gas stations and hole-in-the-wall joints up and down Washington and Collins Avenues.

Behind the coffee counter in the So-Bee Food Mart (1493 Washington Ave.), owner Guillermo Padrón, former coach of the Cuban national field hockey team, serves coffee and pastries to locals and tourists alike. “The key is the right amount of coffee and two teaspoons of sugar per cup,” he says. “Some cafés skimp on the coffee to save money. You can tell if they didn’t use enough coffee because you won’t see the foam, the espumita, on top.” A shot of Padrón’s espresso boasts a generous head of all-important espumita, as does the brew down the street at the window of the Dominican- owned Ocoa’s Market (1147 Washington Ave.). Martha Vilches, the Nicaraguan barista there, confides that she makes excellent coffee but doesn’t drink it herself: for the Nicaraguan palate, it’s “demasiado fuerte” (too strong).

At most ventanas, Spanish is the primary language spoken. At places like Rancho Los Cocos and El Palacio de Los Jugos, not much English is spoken at all (Miami Beach, of course, is a comfortably bilingual environment used to accommodating out-of-towners). But Glenn Lindgren, one of three brothers-in-law who maintain the website www.iCuban.com (and have authored a cook book, Three Guys from Miami Cook Cuban), encourages coffee-loving visitors to be adventurous, even if they are a trifle nervous about stepping into an alien culture. Lindgren, who is neither Cuban nor Miamian—he lives in Minneapolis with his Cuban wife—describes his Spanish as “extremely limited”. But he assures his fellow Anglos that they have nothing to fear but fear itself (and watery American coffee).

“I never liked coffee, but then I started drinking Cuban coffee to be polite, because to turn down cafecito in a Cuban home is like refusing to shake someone’s hand when they offer it to you,” Lindgren relates. “Then I became addicted to it. If you’re not Cuban and you’re not from Miami, don’t be afraid. The people here will welcome you and your interest in their culture. ‘Un cafecito’—that’s all the Spanish you need to know.” That, and “qué rico”—”how delicious”.

A CAFECITO LEXICON
Un café, un cafecito—a demitasse of espresso, served pre-sweetened (and many Cubans dump in even more sugar!).
Un cortadito—literally, something which has been cut (cortado)—in this case, espresso cut with a little milk. Also served pre-sweetened.
Sin azœcar—without sugar. You need to specify when ordering, because the coffee normally drips directly into the sugar.
Un café con leche—coffee with lots of milk, usually taken at breakfast.
Una colada—a large serving of sweetened espresso served in a to-go cup that’s meant to be shared, and comes with a stack of tiny thimble cups.
Un pastelito—a baked puff-pastry filled with meat (carne), cheese (queso) or guava (guayaba).
Una empanada—a fried pie filled with meat, guava, ham and cheese (jamón y queso) or other fillings.
Una croqueta—a breaded and fried croquette, made with ham (jamón), chicken (pollo) or spinach (espinaca).
Una papa rellena—fried mashed potato balls stuffed with seasoned ground beef.
Galletas/galletitas—cookies.