Classic and Fusion CUBAN FOOD TOUR | Miami, Florida

Mmm. It's hard to talk. Good morning everyone. I'm David Hoffman from David's Been Here. And as most of you know, I live in Miami. Aladdin food paradise. And there's no better place in the world to try amazing Cuban cuisine. I'm meeting up with my friend John, whose grandparents have left their mark on Miami with their iconic restaurant Islas Canarias. Now the new generation is revolutionizing Cuban gastronomy by introducing new concepts and fusion recipes. We're heading to Southwest Miami-Dade where we'll be trying a range of specialties from traditional pastries and dishes to Korean-Cuban fusion. Let's go on a delicious Cuban food tour. I cannot wait. I'm super excited. Cuban fusion. Oh, let's do it. Bueno amigo, gracias. Our first stop today is Islas Canarias Cafe and Bakery. We're going to have a traditional Cuban breakfast to start the day. We're going to have croquetas, pastelitos, Cuban coffee. Let's go inside and meet with John. How are you, sir? What's up, bro? My name is Jonathan Andrade, and Islas Canarias is a restaurant that my grandfather came up with in 1977 out east off of 27th Avenue and Northwest 2nd. And he basically split up two restaurants, one to my uncle, which is the one on 27th, and the one we're at now, which is my mom's, Islas Canarias Cafe. So basically it's just a Cuban, authentic Cuban, Spanish-style restaurant, best croquetas in the world, which is what I do. That's my department, the croqueta department, king of croquetas, Jonathan Andrade. The concept here is more bakery-style, which we get a lot of party orders. We do cakes, we do pastelitos, we do party trays. People can expect that here, and also different from the traditional Islas Canarias because we have also a lamb shank with a mushroom risotto, which is really, really good. We serve that on Saturdays. So it's a little bit of a mix of Caribbean, Latin American food here, not so much authentic as the one in Corwe in 137. My grandfather had a restaurant in Cuba, and when the Castro regime came in, they took all that away. So he always had a background in that. He grew up on a farm, and when he came here, he opened up a counter restaurant called El Teide, which is a Spanish-style restaurant. Once he sold that, he opened up Islas. History after that. Cheers, dude. This is Cuban crack, is what we're having right now. Cuban crack? Yeah, I call it liquid crack. Liquid crack, whatever you want to call it. But it does the trick. It wakes you up, gets you ready for your day, mix it with a little tostada, café con leche. There's a million ways to drink it, but it goes down smooth every time. Yeah, this is what I drink every single morning. It's the best, man. The problem is I can't drink this past 3 p.m. because then I don't sleep. Well, me neither. There's some people that drink it right before they go to sleep. I don't know how to do it. Those are the true OG Cubans. Yeah, right? My grandma used to do that. We have a traditional Spanish dessert called garbanzo fritos. Oh, perfect. The desayuno criollo has two eggs however you want it, bacon, sausage, or chorizo, papas de la casa, which are sautéed potatoes, french fries, and two croquetas, which is the best part of the breakfast. The coffee is safe. Yes. Yes, yes. Thank you. The desayuno criollo, this is like the most typical Cuban breakfast. The truth, man. The truth to me. You're not lying because you know you're going to take some more home. I've actually never done that, but I have mixed it all together. Tostada is like Cuban bread. They put butter on it, and it's like a baguette-style bread. And the best thing to do is either you dip this into a café con leche. I didn't get a café con leche. I got a regular espresso. You can't live without this. Dip it into your yolk. Addictive. It's like a ham, onion, flour, you know, like a roux. It comes from France, the word croquettes. For me, my favorite is putting a croqueta inside a tostada, you know, just making a sandwich out of it. Croqueta preparada. And so you mix this all together? Yeah. Right? That's how I eat most of my food. I love the way you do the potatoes. They're good, right? Fantastic food. Very good. All right, so how should I do this? Put the tostada, throw the egg on top, a little bite. So I want to just do a big bite. That's the way to eat it. I might have ate too much, but that breakfast was incredible. We are going to Finca Table and Tap, the hottest Peruvian, Cuban, Korean fusion restaurants in all of Miami. And so your sister Aileen is the one who like started this concept. She did. She went to Korea as well and learned from like some old Korean lady on a mountaintop how to cook Korean food. What? Yeah. Yeah, so she brought back all those flavors. She realized one of our head chefs here is Peruvian, so that's where we got that Peruvian flavor too. It all combined together and it was magic. I'm Aileen Andrade and I'm the chef and owner of Finca Table and Tap and Armenia's 1931 here in Miami, Florida. So Finca Table and Tap is a Latin Asian concept focusing on Korean, Cuban, and Peruvian cuisine. We have a full craft bar. We press our juices daily, so we make our own syrups. We make our own juices, our bitters. We focus on small craft breweries and small batch boutique spirits. We have a nice fusion for the area. Around here is a lot of traditional Latin restaurants, so we're bringing something new to the table. A little vibe from Wynwood, a little bit from Brickell, and definitely an innovative menu where you can be adventurous and then also you can be kind of traditional. So it depends on what you're feeling for the day. We have the grilled octopus with the polenta fries. What I'm bringing out in these flavors is the anticucho sauce, which normally goes with the grilled beef parts, but I put it on the octopus. And then the polenta fries that I make also have a little bit Peruvian olives in them. The other plate that we have is the loaded fries. It's sweet and spicy flank steak, marinated with Korean flavor seasoning, some Asian pears, soy, mirin, and then I make a special sauce with those marinated flavors as well. The other dish that we have is the bimbimbap. The one that we have over here is a fusion between Cuban and Korean cuisine. The bimbimbap is a traditional rice bowl dish from Korea. So it's fries with a secret sauce and there's steak inside, right? Hanger steak. Mmm. I love it. Good? Mmm. It's a little spicy too. Yeah. Fries, onions, there's steak. Yeah, those are fried red onions. Hanger steak, secret sauce. Oh my god. And the chives. I mean, it's like a meal though. Oh yeah. You eat it by yourself? But I'm feeling the spice, you know? Like it's still like a little tingling in my mouth. Let's continue with the bibimbap. This is like their most famous dish. It's a good representation of the Cuban and Korean fusion. So you want me to cut it and like just mix it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let that egg fly everywhere. Boom. Okay. There you go. Oh my god. Get a little bit of everything. Well, I noticed you mix everything together and you're going to get like a blast of flavors. You get exactly what you want. Salty, cold, chewy. Right. Mmm. I didn't get the kimchi over here. It's like how it all blends together. And I think that it all complements each other. Baca frita. Flank steak. This is the easier one. This is like the lightest of them all. This is the octopus on the grill. We have the polenta fries. Polenta is one of my favorite things ever. Mmm. It's good. I love the sauce, man. Awesome. Just dip a little bit. There you go. Double dip. Octopus, the reason why I think it's a big part of the cuisine because a lot of Cubans came from Galicia, Spain. There it's like cuban gallego. It's a little different. This is a la perdida, which is almost the same, I think. There it's put like oil and stuff. Here we have a different type of sauce. Dude, I'm going straight back to Galicia with this. This is the freshest octopus in Miami. Yes, sir. One more stop, but I can't leave this, dude. No. Finca and tap. Dude, the food was amazing. So our last stop is Emilia's 1931, and that is the name of his grandmother, and this is like a tribute to her. She was born in 1931. And this is similar to Finca in terms of food, but it's a different vibe, a different style. They also have beer and wine. So Emilia's 1931 is a cozy atmosphere. It's more like a Cuban diner, a lot of counter space. So if you're by yourself or you're here on a date, you can just pop in, grab a bite, grab a beer. We have 52 beers available, 6 on tap, and a bunch of bottled beers ranging from Asian beers to Latin beers, beers that are brewed here in Miami. So we always say there's a beer for you. Even if you don't drink beer, we've got something for you. A lot of good ciders as well. Some good wine, and the vibe here is really, really cool. It's chill, and I think it's more of a date spot as opposed to Finca's more of a celebration place where you go for your birthday or graduation, baby shower, things like that. This is more of like you want to catch up with your friends, you want to bring your mom, you want to bring your girlfriend, your boyfriend, very 1930s vibe. We've got 1930s music. The decor is kind of Cuban-inspired. There's a lot of things from my grandmother's house. The restaurant's named after my grandmother. It was from her era. We'll kind of transport you when you walk in here. This is Eduardo. He is the head chef here. Right now he's making jambalaya. Jambalaya. Jambalaya, which is shrimp with a type of sausage, no? Whiteboard. Whiteboard sausage. You have onions. Red pepper. And? And enchilada sauce. Enchilada sauce. Don't worry, we're speaking Spanglish, but this is how we do it in Miami. ACP, arroz con pollo peruano y malanga toast. All right, so these are our Peruvian-style arroz con pollo fritters. So they are Cuban-style. The Peruvian-style, what we do is use salsa verde, which is a scallion and cilantro-based sauce with a little bit of aji limo, so it's a little bit spicy. We make them into fritters and stuff them with mozzarella, deep fry them, and we top them off with a guacatay mayo, a pico de gallo, and micro cilantro. Oh, my God. And then right over here, one of our most popular dishes is our malanga tots. So this is our friturita malanga that we make in-house. We top that off with vaca frita, some fried garlic, aji amarillo mayo, a cilantro mayo, and also some micro cilantro. Arroz con pollo Peruvian-style. Peruvian-style. It's stuffed with mozzarella inside, so we get that cheesy gooeyness in the middle. So when I cut it, you're going to get a little, like, pop right there, right? Oh, man. Mmm. It's good? Yeah, it's good, it's good. Mozzarella, tomato on top, this nice sauce. Guacatay mayo. Guacatay. Mmm. It's good, right? That is amazing. Aileen. La malanga. Malanga. Malanga tots. Vaca frita. Vaca frita, okay. You got guacatay. You get the acidity from the vaca frita. For sure my favorite dish of the day. Yeah. Alright, so this is our alligator fried rice. Okay. It's fried alligator, and we toss it in a general salsa. If you're in Miami, you're the only restaurant in Miami that serves this. So as you can see, this is a chunk of gator tail. Get it right next door, marinate it 24 hours, and then... Wow. You would never know it's gator. And it has this Asian flavor to it. 24-hour marinade. Mmm. It's good, man. This is way better than fried rice. Chicken fried rice. And it's still just guac. Oh, it's the guac. I love the gator so much, I'm taking it home. So what do we have here? We have our Korean style frita. So what makes a frita a frita is that it has chorizo. So we do half chorizo, half beef. We got some Asian flavors in there, so it's a little bit sweet, a little bit spicy, because of the chorizo and the kimchi. This is our last dish. It's a freakin' frita. It's a frita. Freakin' frita. It's a frita. It's bad, man. Mmm. It's hard to talk. I'm just, like, absorbing the flavors. The guac atay makes this burger out of control. French fries, like, fried with little potatoes, but, like, super tiny. But, yeah, this is a must-try burger. I personally love truffles. This is, like, a dream for me. Don't have a problem. Make your dreams come true. Like Disney World. Restaurant version. I love you, dude. Okay, so I hope you love this Cuban, traditional fusion food tour video. It was amazing. All three restaurants are unique. I love the concept here. 1930s Cuban diner vibe. Gotta say the malanga here was insane. Alligator fried rice was out of this world. And then, so the octopus at Finca. The beers were great. And the Cuban breakfast. Can't get anything more traditional than that. Croquetas with tostada, bacon, and Cuban coffee. Amazing. Gotta give a big thanks to John and Eileen for giving me a tour. This food is incredible. When you're in Miami and you want to try some Cuban fusion or traditional, come out here to Southwest Miami Dade. It's amazing. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. Leave me a comment below. And subscribe to my channel. See you on the next adventure.