The Cuban sandwich that nobody talks about is the best kept secret on every menu
Forget Tampa. Forget Key West. The Elena Ruz is the Cuban sandwich that’s actually from Cuba.
This Cuban sandwich has no pork. No ham. No pickles or mustard or even Cuban bread. (And certainly no salami, Tampa.) Yet you’ll find it at any self-respecting Cuban restaurant, ventanita or fonda worth its café cubano from Miami to Los Angeles.
The Elena Ruz sits at the opposite end of the flavor spectrum from a traditional Cuban sandwich. It’s not a sandwich for palate novices.
Nestled between slightly toasted medianoche egg bread are slices of roasted white meat turkey, whipped cream cheese and strawberry preserves, served warm — but not pressed.
Who says? Elena Ruz herself.
Ruz was an 18-to-19 year old living in El Vedado, Cuba in 1927 (or was it 1928?) when she and friends were regulars at a restaurant at the corner of Calzada and D streets called El Carmelo, she told the Miami Herald in 1986. She instructed the waiters exactly how to make it — and even asked them to put it on the menu so she wouldn’t have to keep explaining it.
“I remember going there on many an afternoon and describing my concoction to the waiter, to the point that when they saw me coming, they knew what I would order,” she told Herald writer Maria Elena Cardenas.
One day she came to El Carmelo to find her name in lights. She arrived with her then fiancé and mother (as her super chaperona) and saw a neon sign that read, “Ask for an Elena Ruz. Delicious sandwich. 25 cents.” Her mother was mortified, she told the Herald, that the restaurant appeared to be offering her up on a plate. Elena didn’t care. She had become a star.
“I loved it, but my mother was horrified,” Ruz told Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago later, in 1996. “She thought it was disgraceful to have my name in lights as if I were advertising myself.”
The story of Elena Ruz was muddled over the years when Ruz fled Cuba with her family after the Cuban revolution. No, the family had to tell people, it was not an Elena Ruth named for Babe Ruth’s wife. No, it wasn’t named after the late dictator Fidel Castro’s mother, whose last name also was Ruz. (No relation.)
Ruz and her husband, former sugar mill owner Eduardo Ulacia, settled in Kendall after a 9-year stay in Spain, where she also found the sandwich. She eventually moved to San Jose, Costa Rica, to live with her family, where she died in 2011.
But she left a living legacy.
Raul Valdés-Faulí, the Coral Gables mayor whose grandfather was first cousins with Ruz, said she was a good sport about her eponymous sandwich. Cooking runs in their family. That grandfather, also named Raul, created a recipe for black beans that shows up in the most authentic Cuban cookbooks, including a version in Nitza Villapol’s Cocina Al Minuto (where she misspelled the family’s name).
“We’re proud that Elena made a contribution to Cuban culture, to Cuban food, to Cuban lore,” Valdés-Faulí said.
You can honor, her, too — if you make the sandwich right.
Start with fresh medianoche bread — it’s slightly sweet and smaller than Cuban bread. Don’t go to Publix. Find a local Cuban bakery — El Brazo Fuerte, Pinocho, La Rosa, Vicky — and buy a pack of fresh loaves for less than three bucks.
Toast and butter or press the sliced bread first, before assembling the sandwich, she often said.
“Not afterward with all the ingredients in it, already made up,” she told the Herald. “Don’t place too many slices of turkey — it won’t be manageable.”
Whip the cream cheese. Don’t lop off blocks of Philly and plunk them down on the sandwich. Whipping it with a fork or whisk will give it an airy texture.
Skip the jelly. Go for chunky strawberry preserves or jam and spread it on the opposite slice of the toasted medianoche bread.
Use hearty slices of white meat turkey. Elena said using dark meat was fine, but it wasn’t her preference at El Carmelo. Slice on the bias as you would a traditional Cuban sandwich.
If you’re looking for something to do with that leftover Christmas turkey breast, think of Elena. She ate them all the time and lived to be 102.
Be like Elena.
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 4:15 PM.
