Tampa café honors historic Ybor City cigar workers with 'melting pot' of flavors

TAMPA - At Soul de Cuba Café in Seminole Heights, brothers Jesus and Robert Puerto have food to serve and a story to tell.

"I wait for them to have the first bite of their meal, and then they get it," says Jesus.

What they get in food and photos is a uniquely Tampa story of how our food came from a melting pot of immigrant cigar workers who came from everywhere to invent eclectic Ybor City flavors.

"Instead of serving that crab enchila over rice, you serve it over pasta because you have the Sicilian influence. So you have Cuba, Tampa, Afro-Cuban, Sicilian all coming together," says Jesus.

It’s the food that cigar workers ate to sustain their bodies.

"But also their spirituality and their traditions, which were rooted in African, indigenous Cuban, and Roman Catholic traditions," says Jesus.

There’s a huge photo of the Harvest Ball on Nov. 2 1944. Segregated Black people came together at their own club in Ybor.

"It was the place where Black America and Black Cuba met," says Jesus.

He was born in Tampa, but after he suffered a near fatal case of Meningitis in 1993, Jesus went off to the Peace Corps, worked for the United Nations, Paul Newman’s charities, and opened a similar restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut. However, his dream in recent years was to return to his roots and serve his grandmother’s recipes that tell Tampa’s story.

READ: Bern's Steakhouse showcasing new art to help tell its rich history

"The story needs to be here because there are a lot of changes going on in Tampa," says Jesus.

They’re making sure that Old Tampa is remembered, from how it looked to how it tasted.

"And we’re able to tell that story one plate at a time," says Jesus.

Soul de Cuba Cafe is at 6428 N Florida Ave., in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood.

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