How much does Miami love Cuban burgers? We just named a street after the fritas wizard
During the lunch rush on the day before a street would be named in his honor, Ortelio Cárdenas was working the deep fryer and calling out orders — four days shy of his 81st birthday.
“María, two fritas a caballo for pick up!” he said.
He sits for ninety seconds. And then he’s back up, watching over the grill cook as she flips the Cuban hamburgers that made him an icon for the last 35 years at El Mago de las Fritas in West Miami.
“I always want the product to come out just right,” he said, seated again at the stool furthest to the back of the store, where customers find him every day, greeting him before taking their seats.
That consistency is why West Miami mayor Rhonda Rodriguez worked with Miami-Dade County commissioner Rebeca Sosa to surprise Cardenas by naming the street next to his restaurant — the one block of Southwest 58th Avenue between Southwest Eighth and Ninth Streets — Ortelio “El Mago” Cardenas Way. City and county representatives will unveil the signs Friday at 9:45 a.m. at either end of the avenue.
“What a tremendous honor,” Cardenas said, as he sat between frita orders. “And that they gave it to me while I was alive to enjoy it.”
Rodriguez admits these kinds of honors are usually given posthumously. But she said the city, all .7 acres of it with its 8,100 residents, owes it to Cardenas to let him enjoy the achievement.
“When you walk in there, it’s like family,” she said over the phone. “Having any family business in our city that long, that’s really an accomplishment.”
For years, El Mago’s frita shop was one of Miami’s best-kept secrets. Cardenas learned how to make them from his brother-in-law, Victoriano Gonzalez, his late wife’s brother who started Miami’s other famous frita shop, El Rey de las Fritas.
But then President Barack Obama stopped in during a 2010 fundraiser. And soon the restaurant was featured on the Food Network, at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival and was even the subject of “American Diner,” a show that updated the restaurant’s aging booths and counter.
But little has changed about the way the restaurant runs.
Mago is still the only one who knows the secret recipe to his all-beef patties. (Whispers have it that he has told his daughter, Martha Belkys, who runs the business side and also works at the restaurant most days.)
“We told him not to get too cocky,” Martha said.
Cardenas has resisted using his name to expand. There is only one frita wizard and one place to find him.
“If you grow and expand and you’re not there to watch over it, the quality goes down,” he said. “That was never for me.”
El Mago de las Fritas
5828 SW 8th St., West Miami
