The Sandwich Every Florida Trip Should Include At Least Once

Every state has one food people argue about, and in Florida it is the Cuban sandwich, and the argument is Tampa against Miami for who invented it first.

Tampa has the better claim and the receipts to back it up. Ybor City, the old cigar factory district just east of downtown Tampa, was built by Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants working the cigar trade in the late 1800s, and the sandwich came out of that same neighborhood, built to feed factory workers a full meal they could eat with one hand on a lunch break.

The Columbia Restaurant sits in the middle of Ybor City and has been serving that same sandwich since 1905. It is the oldest restaurant in Florida and the largest Spanish restaurant in the world, and the building alone is worth the stop, tile work and archways that make it feel like you walked into old Havana rather than a strip mall off the interstate.

The sandwich itself is not complicated, which is part of why it works. Cuban bread, ham, roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard, and here is the detail that separates a real Tampa Cuban from every other version, a thin layer of Genoa salami, which snuck in from the Italian immigrants working the same cigar factories and never left. Miami’s version drops the salami. Tampa keeps it, and once you have had it with the salami the Miami version tastes like it is missing something, because it is.

The whole thing gets pressed flat in a plancha, a heavy sandwich press, until the bread is crackly outside and everything inside is warm and a little melted together. That press is the other non negotiable part. A Cuban sandwich made cold or unpressed is a different food entirely.

If you are doing an Orlando trip and can carve out a day for Tampa, it is about an hour and a half west down I 4, close enough to pair with Busch Gardens or the Tampa Riverwalk with a stop at Columbia for lunch. If Tampa is not on the itinerary, plenty of Cuban sandwich counters exist all over central Florida doing a solid version. Look for a plancha in the window and Cuban bread on the menu specifically, not a generic sub roll standing in for it.

My kids will eat a Cuban sandwich faster than they will eat a hot dog at this point, which says something about how food changes a family’s palate after enough trips like this one. It is inexpensive, it travels well if you get one to go for a car ride, and it gives you one real, specific thing to point to when someone asks what Florida food tastes like, instead of the generic answer of seafood and orange juice that every state along a coastline could claim.

I cover where food fits into each of Florida’s six different trips, along with the parks, the beaches, and when hurricane season threatens your dates, on my Florida guide.