Salami on Your Cubano? Where to Find Cuban Food in St. Louis
Revised October 13, 2026
What is the most popular Cuban food?
The Cuban sandwich, el cubano, is the Cuban food most Americans meet first: roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard on Cuban bread, pressed flat and hot. On a plate, ropa vieja, shredded beef stewed in tomato, is known as one of the national dishes of Cuba.
Keep reading ↓The bread is from Tampa. That’s the first thing nobody tells you about the cubano so many St. Louisans argue is the best in town. Havana’s Cuisine builds it on loaves from La Segunda Central Bakery, the Tampa bakery that still lays a long, wet palmetto frond across its bread before baking, then presses it on Euclid Avenue until the crust shatters. You hear it first. The lid comes down. Butter hisses at the edges, the Swiss goes glossy and creeps out the corners, and the knife crackles going through. The paper is too hot to hold right. You hold it anyway, shoulders hunched so the yellow mustard misses your shirt.
The woman behind that press didn’t move here to make sandwiches. St. Louis Magazine reported that Tamara Landeiro came to St. Louis from Cuba so her daughter, Thalia, could study at the chess club in the Central West End. Thalia went on to become a grandmaster, an international champion and an Olympic medalist. Her mother kept cooking. She launched a food truck in March 2020, opened a downtown storefront in October 2021, then carried the entire menu to 12 S. Euclid, the old Racanelli’s space, moving the restaurant, in the magazine’s words, closer to where her St. Louis story began. A chess move, of sorts. The sandwich followed the family home.
Here’s how to do it tonight. The restaurant’s own site lists hours of Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., closed Sunday, and a phone number, (314) 899-9977, if you want to check before you drive. Street meters and nearby garages handle parking. At the counter, ask for the Tampa Cuban, which its online menu describes as “Tampa’s classic Cuban sandwich with the addition of salami,” and take the black bean soup as your side. Spoon it while the sandwich cools enough to pick up. If someone at your table wants a plate, point them to the arroz con pollo. Eater describes it as Landeiro’s grandmother’s recipe, yellow rice and chicken cooked in beer, and the smell of it at the next table will change your order. Start with the jamon croquetas, crisp outside, creamy in the middle. Vegans get a real plate too: made-from-scratch black beans with yellow rice, maduros and fried yucca. Can’t sit down? The site offers pick-up, and DoorDash delivers.
And here’s the turn most people miss. Cherokee Street is home to a significant Latine community, but the cubano people argue about never landed there. It went truck, then downtown, then the Central West End, following a family’s story instead of a neighborhood map. If it’s Sunday and the Euclid counter is dark, that’s your night for Cherokee Street, or open the Cuban food listings on St Louis Near Me Directory for other kitchens and trucks.
What is the most popular Cuban food?
The Cuban sandwich, el cubano, is the Cuban food most Americans meet first: roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard on Cuban bread, pressed flat and hot. On a plate, ropa vieja, shredded beef stewed in tomato, is known as one of the national dishes of Cuba.
In St. Louis, the version worth asking about is Tampa’s. Tampa’s version adds salami and South Florida’s usually leaves it out, and Havana’s Cuisine serves a Tampa Cuban that adds salami right here. So when a thin, peppery layer peeks out beside the ham, nobody made a mistake. You got Tampa. Mojo-marinated pork stacked with ham and Swiss, leaned on with a hot plancha until the crust shatters.
Ropa vieja is the plate you want on a gray St. Louis January night, when the wind off the river finds every gap in your coat. The name means “old clothes,” for beef stewed with peppers, onion, tomato, cumin and bay until it falls into soft ribbons, spooned over white rice beside black beans, steam fogging your glasses. It’s known as one of the national dishes of Cuba. At Havana’s Cuisine the plate comes with white rice, black bean soup, maduros and fried yucca, the whole island on one plate.
Cherokee Street is the fallback, not the finish line
Cherokee Street runs east-west across South City from Grand Boulevard to Broadway, and it’s known for a significant Latine community, restaurants, shops, nightlife, galleries and the storefronts of Antique Row. On a warm evening you hear music leaking out of open doors and smell a grill somewhere up the block before you see it. The same corridor feeds the city’s Mexican food scene, so even on a night without a cubano, you won’t go home hungry.
That’s the real shape of authentic Cuban food near St. Louis: a smaller scene than tacos or toasted ravioli, spread across a truck window here and a dining room there.
So hunt it on purpose. The reward is the moment the paper comes off and the bread cracks under your teeth, and you remember exactly which curb you were standing on.
Some nights you want one perfect sandwich. Other nights, a buffet with no last plate.
What should you order the first time?
Order two things: a Cuban sandwich and a plate of ropa vieja or lechon asado with rice, black beans and plantains. Between them you get the full range, one pressed and crackling, one slow and saucy. If croquetas are on the menu, add a couple to start. They’re creamy ham fritters about the size of your thumb, crisp outside, and they vanish fast at a shared table.
The plate teaches you the rhythm of a Cuban kitchen. Nearly everything savory lands beside white rice and black beans, sometimes cooked together as congri, sometimes side by side. Then comes the plantain choice: maduros, ripe plantains fried until sweet and jammy, or tostones, green ones smashed flat and fried into salty, crunchy disks. Get both and pass them across the table. Lechon asado, pork shoulder soaked in mojo and roasted until it pulls apart, is the same pork that fills the cubano, served on a plate with its juices pooling into the rice. Vegetarians have a narrower road, but yuca con mojo, black beans, rice and plantains make an honest meal.
If the Cubano has you curious about the island next door, here’s what to order when you find Puerto Rican food in St. Louis.
If you’ve ever worked your way through a menu at an Argentine restaurant, the same instinct applies here: order the thing the kitchen is known for, then the plate a grandmother would make, and share both.
A first-timer’s table, in order
- Croquetas de jamon. Ham fritters fried gold, creamy inside.
- The cubano. Ask for Tampa-style if you want the salami.
- Ropa vieja or lechon asado. Shredded beef or mojo pork over rice and black beans.
- Maduros or tostones. Sweet and soft, or green and crunchy. Why not both.
- Flan and a cafecito. Caramel custard, then a tiny sweet shot of coffee.
Split one of each and argue about it. Order a Tampa Cuban and a plate of lechon for the table, pass the maduros, and decide which one you’d drive back for. Sunday, or out of luck? Pull up the Cuban spots listed on St Louis Near Me Directory and find the next press that’s hot.
If you run the sandwich counter, the bakery or the family kitchen pressing Cubanos before the lunch rush, the people reading this page are hungry and ready to drive. A Gold listing puts your menu, your photos and your story where they’re already looking, so you get more customers instead of more empty tables. See what a Gold listing does for a kitchen like yours.
Six ingredients, one hot press, no lettuce
A real cubano is a short list: Cuban bread, roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, yellow mustard and thin dill pickles. No lettuce. No tomato. No mayo. What turns that list into the sandwich is heat and weight, a plancha that flattens it and fuses the bread into a buttery shell around the melting cheese.
The bread is its own animal. Cuban bread is baked with a little lard or shortening and a thin, soft crust that crisps beautifully under the press, lighter than a baguette and closer to a very soft French loaf. When a shop can’t get it, a hoagie roll or ciabatta stands in, and the sandwich changes character. Still good. Not the same crackle.
And always press. An unpressed cubano is a ham sandwich with extra steps. The press melts the Swiss into the pork, warms the middle all the way through and seals the edges so the whole thing holds together when you bite. That low hiss and the squeak of the lid is the sound of a sandwich being finished properly. The croquetas you ordered on the side have cousins on nearly any Spanish tapas menu in town.
How can you tell the cooking is real?
Look for mojo, a press and real Cuban bread, then taste for garlic, sour orange, cumin and patience. Authentic Cuban cooking is savory and citrusy and almost never spicy, so a menu drowning in hot peppers is usually borrowing from somewhere else. The clearest tell is the pork: marinated, roasted low, pulling apart in soft, shiny strands you can smell from across the table.
Watch the beans, because they’re what Cubans eat every day. The everyday plate is rice and black beans with a little meat and plantains, so a kitchen that respects its beans respects you. They should taste of garlic, bay, cumin and a splash of vinegar or wine, simmered until creamy. Rice should be separate and fluffy, or cooked with the beans as congri until the grains go soft brown. Under nearly everything sits sofrito, the sauteed base of onion, pepper and garlic. You can taste when it’s really there.
The fast test is small. Maduros should be nearly black at the edges and jammy-sweet, cooked well past the point where an impatient cook would pull them. And the meal should end with coffee. A kitchen that nails those two little things usually nails the big ones.
One recalibration before you go: if you’re expecting the chili burn of Mexican or Thai food, Cuban cooking won’t deliver it. Garlic, citrus, cumin, oregano and bay carry the flavor, with black pepper as the boldest note on the plate. Plenty of first-timers reach for hot sauce out of habit. Taste first.
The meal ends in a cup the size of a thimble
Finish with Cuban coffee, and keep the drink with the meal cold and simple. A cafecito is a tiny shot of espresso sweetened while it brews, so the sugar whips into a pale foam called espuma on top. A cortadito softens it with a little steamed milk. Either one arrives in a cup barely bigger than a thimble, meant to be sipped slowly after the plates are cleared.
With the food, reach for a batido, a thick tropical shake made with mango, papaya or mamey that drinks like a milkshake and cools a rich plate down, or something cold and plain. Plain sparkling water works too when the pork is heavy.
For dessert, flan is the default, a dense caramel custard every Cuban kitchen makes a little differently. Pastelitos, flaky guava and cream-cheese pastries, are the other classic, and they’re not too sweet. Both were built for that coffee. Save room. The whole meal has been leading to the moment the little cup clicks back down on its saucer.
Frequently asked questions about Cuban food
What is a traditional Cuban breakfast?
A traditional Cuban breakfast is short and simple: tostada, buttered Cuban bread pressed flat and toasted, dunked straight into a cafe con leche, strong coffee cut with hot milk. That’s the weekday version. Weekends might add eggs, ham or fruit, but toast and coffee is the morning most Cubans grew up on.
Is Cuban food healthy?
It can be. The backbone is black beans, rice, garlic, citrus and slow-cooked meat, and a plate of ropa vieja with beans and rice is balanced and filling. The heavier side is the fried stuff - croquetas, maduros, tostones - plus the sugar whipped into Cuban coffee and desserts. Portions and balance decide it.
What do Cubans eat every day?
Rice and beans, most days. The everyday plate is white rice, black beans, some pork or chicken and fried plantains on the side, with bread and strong coffee covering breakfast. It’s home cooking built on cheap, filling staples and seasoned with garlic, cumin and sour orange instead of expensive ingredients or chili heat.
What is the most eaten food in Cuba?
Rice and black beans. A typical Cuban meal has both, cooked together as congri until the grains turn soft brown, or served side by side. It’s cheap, filling and flexible next to pork, chicken, eggs or plantains. If you eat one thing every day in Cuba, it’s this.
What is the most popular Cuban meal?
As a full sit-down meal, it’s ropa vieja: tender shredded beef in a sauce of tomato, onion and garlic, spooned over white rice beside black beans and sweet maduros. The Cuban sandwich is the one you hold in your hands. One is a plate you linger over; the other is lunch you can carry down Euclid Avenue.
Where can I find authentic Cuban food near St. Louis, MO?
Start with Havana’s Cuisine at 12 S. Euclid Avenue in the Central West End, open Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and ask for the Tampa Cuban with black bean soup. For other kitchens and trucks, the Cuban food listings on St Louis Near Me Directory are the place to browse.
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.