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‘Southern Living’ names Columbia Restaurant’s Cuban sandwich best in Florida

The restaurant was one of two Bay area concepts on the 'Best of the South' rankings.

By Ray Roa on Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 12:50 pm

Photo c/o 1905 Family of Restaurants

Southern Living wrote that Columbia's Cuban stands apart because of superior ingredients.

Southern Living readers crowned East Tampa’s Big John’s Alabama BBQ best barbecue in Florida, and another storied local spot topped part of the listing, too.

On the same day as Columbia Restaurant’s 104th birthday, readers of the fabled magazine voted the Tampa institution’s Cuban sandwich as best in Florida.

“Their version is set apart by a few superior ingredients: glazed ham with subtle sweetness, pork shoulder instead of pork loin, and perfect bread made locally at La Segunda Central Bakery,” Southern Living writes.

“My father would be proud to have read the article,” Richard Gonzmart, Columbia’s fourth-generation caretaker, wrote in a press release.

The magazine tapped a third party to run its “South’s Best” survey, which saw more than 20,000 people chime in from July 12-Aug. 23 last year.

The sandwich is perhaps the most iconic food of Tampa and was immortalized in Best of the Bay-winning book, “The Cuban Sandwich: A History in Layers," one of the best Florida books of 2022.

Last Thanksgiving, one of the book’s authors, past Creative Loafing Tampa Bay columnist and reporter Andy Huse was immortalized in the New York Times’ illustrated history of the Cuban sandwich.

The accolade is not the first for Columbia and its parent company, the 1905 Family of Restaurants.

In 2021, Food & Wine called the Columbia Cuban the best sandwich in Florida, and in 2020 it was among Food Network's "Best Sandwiches in America." PBS even devoted an entire episode of “Cook's Country From America's Test Kitchen” to the recipes used to create the sandwich.

Slideshow

Breaking bread: A culinary history of Tampa in 10 meals

Tampa Bay Hotel opens, 1891When tycoon Henry Plant brought his railroad to Tampa in 1884, he found a pathetic hardscrabble town of 700 people. But in the years after the railroad connection, Tampa’s elite clamored for Plant to open a luxury hotel in his latest terminus. On Feb. 5, 1891, Plant’s Tampa Bay Hotel opened with a grand ball. At 9 that evening, the capacity crowd enjoyed an opera. Then Mayor Herman Glogowski led a grand procession to the dining room for a reception and dancing. At 11, a buffet offered oysters, fish, cold roasts, salad and desserts. The party didn’t wind down until 1 a.m.; the guests slept on couches and chairs in the lobby, as the bedrooms had not yet been furnished.The Tampa Bay Hotel frequently made headlines, especially during the Spanish-American war when journalists and generals commiserated from the veranda’s rocking chairs. The kitchen served up lavish meals with menus written entirely in mangled French. But with a short tourist season of just four months, the hotel never really flourished. The old Tampa Bay Hotel is now home to the University of Tampa and the Henry Plant museum.Photo via Burgert Brothers/USF

Ybor City’s first Christmas Eve, 1886Having just moved his factories to Tampa, cigar factory owner Vicente Martinez Ybor feared his restive workers would slip back to Key West or Cuba for the holidays and never return. So he and his wife acted fast: They invited workers and their families for a Christmas Eve (or Noche Buena) feast at his mansion amid the swamps and sand. There was a Christmas surprise: As a sign of gratitude, Ybor divided the profits between his workers, $6,000 in all, or about a month’s wages per worker. Ybor’s gesture won his employees’ confidence, and Cigar City survived to delight and vex generations of Tampans and tourists.Photo via Burgert Brothers/USF

Jose Marti poisoned, 1893Jose Marti—poet, politician and martyr of Cuban independence—visited Tampa on about 17 occasions. He gave enthralling speeches, raised funds for the Cuban insurrection against Spain and almost got himself killed here in 1893. One night, Spanish secret agents bribed Marti’s bodyguards and poisoned his drink (some say tea, others insist it was gin). When the would-be Spanish assassins were discovered, they begged an ill Marti for forgiveness, which he gave. Marti recovered at the home of Paulina Pedroso (on Eighth Avenue and 13th Street), a sympathetic Afro-Cuban. In 1895, Marti landed in Cuba to join the insurrection, where he promptly died in battle. He left a great literary canon and a newborn nation behind.A later owner of the Pedroso home deeded the land to the Cuban government in the 1950s, and it became Marti Park. Years later, the vandalizing of the striking Marti sculpture kicked off a proud Ybor tradition of statue desecration and theft.Photo by Dave Decker

Strike Street soup, 1920Unlike most Floridians, the immigrants of Ybor City and West Tampa (Sevilla building c.1923, pictured here) were not sheepish about unionizing and making demands of their employers. Unions managed to score a few victories in the early years, but they did not continue. When the cigar industry originally settled in Tampa, it did so with the knowledge that the city had agreed to lend its police force to the factory owners when labor troubles arose. During the strike of 1920, determined workers endured for 10 months outside the factories. The Tampa Tribune, at the time a zealous anti-labor advocate, raised the specter of “over-paid and corn-fed agitators [who] intend to absolutely annihilate the cigar industry in this city.” Labor newspaper El International fired back, saying that the pampered factory owners “Don’t know the anarchist-breeding effect of hunger on the victim ... champagne and caviar have always been at their service.”In 1920, the producers stood firm against the strike, and employed the police and vigilantes to ransack the soup kitchens. They threw the food into the manure-laden streets. The destruction of soup kitchens dealt the union a deadly blow. Before long, even the most fanatical strikers began to cave. The strike ended in February 1921 with $12 million in wages lost. The unions never fully recovered from the debacle.Photo via Burgert Brothers/USF

Christmas dinner, MacDill Field, 1941Tampa was already home to important military installations when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The war led to construction of three air bases around the city: Drew Field, MacDill Air Force Base and Henderson Field, the remains of which lie beside the University of South Florida and the Yuengling Brewery (Mel’s Hot Dogs is its last remaining building).The armed forces tried to make Christmas as pleasant as possible for recruits. The three airfields held a huge holiday feast for servicemen and their guests with white tablecloths and Christmas trees. The soldiers returned to the mess twice that day “on a basis of catch as catch can, no holds barred,” the Tribune observed. But the meal was marred by bad war news all over the world, and the holiday meals to follow would be less extravagant. Two years later, the commissaries cut the Christmas dinner luxuries found on the 1941 menu, such as ham, tomatoes, nuts, buttered peas, even pumpkin pie and lemonade. The ongoing war justified unprecedented military spending, especially in the southern U.S. Tampa has benefited from military spending ever since.Robertson and Fresh (Firm) and University of South Florida — Tampa Campus Library, "338 Ordnance Company - 52 Ordnance - BN - (AUN) - MacDill Field - Florida - February 27th 1941" (1941). Robertson and Fresh Collection of Tampa Photographs. Image 145.

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About The Author

Ray Roa

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief in August 2019. Past work can be seen at Suburban Apologist, Tampa Bay Times, Consequence of Sound and The...

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