Where to Find the Best Cuban Sandwiches in Tampa

Restaurants, bakeries, and butchers across The Big Guava serve up Tampa’s official sandwich.

If you’ve got a hankering for a deliciously juicy yet crispy Cuban sandwich, there’s one city in Florida that promises to deliver, no matter what part of town you find yourself in. Tampa named the Cuban its official sandwich about a decade ago, and its city councilmembers even codified the recipe that authenticates a sandwich as an official “historic Tampa Cuban.” 

You must start by slipping narrow palmetto fronds into your Cuban white bread dough to ensure even baking and a perfect seam. Then, bake the long, narrow loaf until it reaches its signature crispy flakiness on the outside and soft airiness on the inside. Next comes ham, sliced very thin and sweetened very lightly; followed by roast pork marinated in mojo sauce, and Genoa salami. This trio of meats is topped off with Swiss cheese, three dill pickle slices, and yellow mustard. Finally, the most important step — press the sandwich until the bread is warmed, and all the ingredients fuse and melt together.

The sandwich traces its roots to Cuba, where its predecessor was the mixto sandwich, “literally a mix of whatever was available, usually some protein and cheese,” says Jeff Houck, who wrote “The Cuban Sandwich: A History in Layers” with Bárbara Cruz and Andrew T. Huse. When Cubans began migrating to Florida in the 1880s to work in the cigar and coffee industries, initially in Key West and later Ybor City in the Tampa metropolitan area, they brought their signature pan de agua, or Cuban bread. Italian immigrants working as stone masons in Ybor City brought their Genoa salami, and Jewish and German immigrants supplied their yellow mustard and pickles. Thus, in the midst of a multicultural melting pot, the Cuban sandwich was born.

“It’s a sandwich that worked well for the people that lived in Ybor City and worked in the cigar factories—it can travel, it’s easy to prepare. Plus, it’s just a satisfying meal,” Houck says. “It had this kind of mass appeal for blue collar people, so the sandwich is an amalgam of all these cultures that lived in this company town of Ybor. You had Cubans, the Spanish, Italians, Germans, Romanians, and Jews all living in the same area.”

Houck says the Cuban sandwich has been ingrained in Tampa’s history for over a century, and it’s definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. 

“In Tampa, the Cuban is not just a sandwich—it’s a representation of history. It’s part of the bedrock of what this city is and has been for over 140 years,” Houck says. “In Tampa, the Cuban sandwich is time travel in every bite. If you’re eating a Cuban at the Columbia Restaurant, you’re eating the same sandwich that someone over 100 years ago ate. That’s a huge piece of civic identity.”

Here are six restaurants, butchers, and bakeries across the Tampa metropolitan area where locals gather to get their fix of their city’s favorite sandwich:

The Boozy Pig 

This Tampa kitchen and butcher shop has made a name for itself with its attention to quality, detail, and innovation—especially when it comes to their best-selling mixto sandwich. “The owner, Andrew Tambuzzo, makes his own salami, which no one does. He makes his own roast pork and ham. The fact that he does so much of it himself is extraordinary. We’re talking eight or nine recipes just for one sandwich. He’s the standard bearer for the next generation,” Houck says. “He doesn’t call it a Cuban; he calls it a mixto. He uses a mixture of his own native Cuban and Sicilian spices and ingredients.”

Columbia Restaurant  

With locations in Ybor City, the Tampa Bay History Center, and the Tampa Airport among others, Columbia Restaurant boasts being Florida’s oldest restaurant, and they’ve been preparing their Cuban sandwiches the same way ever since their doors opened. “The Columbia has been using the same recipe since at least 1915—that’s when the first printed recipe was dated,” says Houck, who also serves as The Columbia’s vice president of marketing. “We roast and glaze our own ham. The architecture of the sandwich is very precise.”

La Segunda Bakery

Established in 1915 by a Spaniard who fell in love with Cuban bread while fighting in the Spanish-American War, this Tampa bakery with outposts in Ybor City, South Tampa and nearby St. Petersburg serves Cubans on crispy, flaky loaves complete with the palmetto leaf baked in. La Segunda has been a family business for over a century, and today, the great-grandson of its founder leads the production of 18,000 loaves of Cuban bread each day.

The Floridian

The 2020 Tampa Bay Times People’s Choice champion Cubano sandwiches at this Tampa lunch counter keep locals coming back in droves, in part because the restaurant offers the choice to order your sandwich “angry.” If you dare, the addition of a wide selection of hot sauces, hot peppers, or maybe both, adds an unexpected kick to the time-honored Cuban recipe.

Wright’s Gourmet House

The Cuban sandwich at this Tampa café has won the Tampa Tribune’s All-Tampa Cuban Sandwich contest six times for its unexpected spin on the time-honored Tampa Cuban recipe. Wright’s pairs the Cuban’s traditional trio of meats (ham, Genoa salami, and roasted pork) with turkey breast. They also replace Swiss cheese with Jarlsberg, a mild, slightly sweet cheese with a distinct nuttiness. Each Cuban is made fresh and pressed to order at Wright’s Gourmet House, so patience is key at this bustling lunch hotspot.

Silver Ring Café 

The time is now to support this Cuban restaurant in Lakeland, just a 35-minute drive from the heart of downtown Tampa. Since 1985, Silver Ring Café has been whipping up Cuban sandwiches, as well as deviled crabs—another recipe born in Ybor City combining Cuban bread, white crab meat, and tomato paste—but the owners now face eviction on Sept. 1.  

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