The Best Cuban Restaurants In Miami

​​You need two very important things to eat at this Cuban restaurant in Hialeah. First, cash—they don’t accept cards. Second, bring a monstrous appetite. Portions here feed you for days. We really love the pollo empanizado. The breading on this chicken crackles like a campfire. But our favorite dish is the vaca frita. La Viña is also great for breakfast. You’ll notice a giant bottle of vinegar and peppers on your table—pour it on your eggs (or anything). The wood paneling and small counter remind us of the Miami we grew up in.

If you want to see the hardest working planchita in the city, go to Little Havana and pop your head into Sanguich. They know how to use a sandwich press—always brushing their bread with lard before crushing layers of pork, pickles, mustard, and swiss cheese between them. The result is crunchy bread that sounds like a hollow wall when you tap it. They make an excellent pan con bistec, but there’s a reason why this is our undisputed favorite Cuban sandwich in Miami (and why there’s often a line out the door). To avoid that line, try the larger (and less touristy) location in Coral Gables.

Why are we telling you to drive to Redland? Because it’s where the best pan con minuta we’ve ever eaten is. Reyes is an open-air straw hut that sells local produce, honey, and fresh juice. But you’re coming here for Cuban food. Everything is hyper-local. The minuta is from a nearby fish farm, and you can thank Redland pigs for your lechon. Plus, portions are huge. They give you so much shredded vaca frita, it’s hard to close the styrofoam box it comes in. End your meal with the dulce de leche cortada with sugary milk curds that squeak when you bite them. 

Think of El Rey as Miami’s version of Johnny Rockets. But instead of a jukebox, there’s a coin-operated mechanical horse in the corner. And their version of a burger is a frita—the best in town. These patties are covered in rust-red smokey spices and topped with crunchy potato sticks before being placed between two cuban bread buns. We like to order ours a caballo, which means “with an egg” and directly translates to “on horseback.” And those eggs run, unlike their mechanical namesake in the corner, which we’ve never actually seen anyone use.

For as much as the Cuban diaspora changed Miami, its descendants are now transforming Cuban food. Chug’s is an excellent example of the sort of Cuban-American restaurant that could only exist in Miami. The frita patty melt comes with tangy blue cheese, and their latkes are made with malanga. But they win us over with a peeled banana. If you’re Cuban, you’ve seen a relative slap an entire ripe banana onto a plate full of meat. That’s exactly what their abuelas plate is—the kind of Cuban food you’d only find at home. We order ours with lechon.

Cafe La Trova is one of the most fun dinner spots in Miami, which is why you'll find people here celebrating birthdays or tourists with rolling bags in tow looking to drink mojitos and dance. We don’t blame them. The drinks are cold and the arroz con pollo gets the job done. But food isn’t quite the point of this spot. It’s the electric energy of the huge restaurant. Your cue to start shimmying is when the bartenders whip out claves and tambourines to play along with the band.

This restaurant is actually in North Miami, not Little Havana. If you have a big family, bring them here. Its multiple dining rooms are filled with the sort of heavy wooden chairs you might find in a Viking mess hall—and have a way of making the matriarch of a family feel like a queen. The menu is big and filled with classics. The vaca frita should always be on the table. The juicy meat comes in a little metal plate that collects all the marinade at the bottom and is covered in translucent onion strips. The arroz con frijoles is also excellent, and the pork chunks are garlicky and tender.

If you’re from Miami, there’s a good chance you formed core memories here, sucking down cold batidos through narrow straws, pressing your face against the steam counter to get a better look at the lechon’s still-attached head, and finding a picnic table by the fans while your parents ordered. Since then, a lot’s changed in Miami, but not at Palacio. The chicharrones at the one on West Flagler are always bubbly and crunchy, and we’re never mad at the arroz con pollo. No visit to any Palacio is complete without a batido de mamey.  

The service isn’t perfect, but Habana Vieja nails classic Cuban dishes, including the city’s most mouth-puckering vaca frita. If guavas are in season, order the guava shells with cream cheese for dessert. It’s sweet guava next to a triangular chunk of cream cheese—the epitome of Cuban cuisine’s love of sweet and salty combinations—and the great grandfather of all those pastelitos de guayaba y queso we love. Grab a seat at the bar with the regulars and you’ll feel like you’re on the porch of a farmhouse.

Islas Canarias is known for their croquetas. Unlike a lot of ham croquetas we’ve eaten, Islas' aren’t a mixture of mystery meat. Biting through the crispy outer layer reveals thin pieces of fresh chives. Their vaca frita is also seasoned perfectly—citrusy, salty, and juicy. And the moros come with chunks of fatty pork. The dining room is always packed, and they also have the most Miami (it’s an adjective too) drive-thru, with a long line of idling cars waiting to order those croquetas.

This Westchester Cuban diner is known for one thing: the bistec rio cristal. It’s a thin beef steak with one giant side of papitas. It’s why people come here—a pile of fries the size of Mt. Tropical Park that makes you question if there really is a steak under all those potato twigs. But it’s there, juicy, and layered with onions and parsley. Some people like to squirt ketchup all over the top, but these are not finger fries. They’re short and bumpy so you can stab them with your fork and eat them together with your steak. Rio Cristal’s flan also ranks in the top of our flan power ranking.

El Rinconcito Super Latino III is a mouthful, and there are a confusing amount of Cuban rinconcitos in Miami. But this is our favorite. It’s a small spot with a few tables that serves one of the best pan con bistecs in the city. The meat is juicy, the bread is springy, and the vinegar and onions tie it all together. Their great vaca frita also comes with a ton of limes, which you won’t actually need because the mojo onions provide more than enough flavor. If you’re in a rush, you can order all of the above at the ventanita.

Cuban bread has a thin crust, but it’s also soft in the middle. There’s no other bread like it, and this Hialeah bakery specializes in everything bread-related. Their cuban sandwich is the size of your forearm. It doesn’t just crunch when you bite into it. It plays your molars like a piano, yet remains soft and fluffy beneath the surface. The croquetas are good too. They even make cakes out of them—sweet vanilla frosted cakes surrounded by salty ham croquetas. It looks like a gag, but it’s pretty good. If that sounds extreme, just get the pastelitos de guayaba.

It’s not usually a good sign when you see tourists wearing Panama hats and awkwardly wielding cigars outside a Cuban restaurant. But it turns out that Havana 1957 isn’t just popular because of its location on Española Way—the food here is very good. Service is fast and friendly (unlike nearby tourist traps) and the mojitos are refreshing. You’ll find some other creative dishes, like ropa vieja empanadas served with a sweet pepper sauce on the side. And although the vaca frita looks like the sad tourist-trap variety, it tastes great. Just make sure to mix it up so it gets to know the vinegary onions. 

Lots of people come to Enriquetas for their Cuban sandwiches. But they have other great things that involve bread. You can order a buttery tostada at the ventanita and dip it into your cafe con leche for a quick breakfast, or grab a pan con bistec at their counter for lunch. But what truly makes Enriqueta’s so special is its location between Wynwood and Edgewater—two neighborhoods more invasive than Everglades pythons. Enriqueta’s is one of the last old-school spots left in the area.

One time, we ate 49 croquetas in two weeks. After that painful research, we officially declared Cakeland’s croqueta the best in the county. But that’s not the only reason to drive to this West Kendall bakery. Save some room in your pastry box for their flaky beef pastelitos. And never leave without a massive loaf of cuban bread under your arm. A strong knock on the outside of the bread will send your confused dog running to the door.

La Carreta is Versailles’ less famous sister restaurant, and we like the food better. While Versailles has a big-city feel, this restaurant is more rural. The ceiling is lined with straw hatching, the servers wear guayaberas, and it’s more casual. The place is huge—and so are the portions. The vaca frita is shredded into long delicious strips, and the maduros are crunchy around the edges. Their mariquitas are crisp, and the mojo is so strong, it pricks the tip of your tongue. Next time someone visiting Miami insists on going to Versailles, take them to the ventanita for a colada and then cross the street to eat at La Carreta. 

Ricky Bakery is a Cuban bakery with four locations across Miami. Their Coral Way shop makes the best pastelitos in town—specifically the guayaba y queso variety. We know this because we once filled a conference room with 35 pastelitos and didn’t emerge until we had a winner. It has a balance of tangy cream cheese and guava paste that’s more tart than sweet. Most pastelitos around town are just glazed on top, but Ricky brushes both sides with a thin layer of syrup. Genius.

There are tons of great Cuban restaurants in Hialeah, and this is one of them. Morro castle is known for their fritas and churros, which are good, but we really love their vaca frita and elena ruz. Order the vaca frita with yuca and mojo. Then dip that fried flank steak in the mojo sauce and enjoy it with a piece of yuca in one bite. And if you order the elena ruz, ask for it with ham instead of turkey. Is it still technically an elena ruz? We bet its namesake (a fan of making up sandwiches) would say so.

Here’s our Luis Galindo rule: come on Thursdays, sit down at the long counter by the sandwich station, and order the ajiaco a la criolla. It’s a hearty soup with pork, yuca, malanga, platanos, and chunks of corn still on the cob. This ajiaco is thick, and unlike Colombian ajiaco, it doesn’t have any potatoes. This sounds counterintuitive, but it’s the perfect food to get you sweating and cooled down on a hot summer day. If it's not Thursday (the only day ajiaco is available), order the tamal en cazuela—a thick corn stew with braised pork.