West Tampa Sandwich Shop
Real Cubans are Swiss not American
Having last visited a Plant City staple on a lark, I thought I’d be more deliberate this time and head to a Tampa staple… the West Tampa Sandwich Shop. Included in just about every “Best Cuban Sandwhich Shop” list I have seen, I’ve wanted to check this place out for years, but it’s 3pm closing time always made for a difficult window for me, so I made sure to prioritize this time.
When I first walked into the place, I was overcome with a general sense of chaos and bewilderment. Inside there was a frenzy of people shouting orders, with a bunch of tables where folks were eating, and some folks, I think, bussing tables, but no perticular wait staff or hosts that I could discern. To be clear, I’ve always felt there was a certain beauty in this type of chaos, like a fantastic rube Goldberg machine that spits out a sandwich at the end, so this wasn’t off-putting, just confusing.
Anyway, it was completely unclear whether you were suppose to sit first or order at the register, but we figured we wanted to eat there anyway so Ambre gave me her order and I waited in line while she went to grab a table. As it turned out, before I got through the line to the register, a waiter came over to take our order, so I quickly ducked out of line and headed to the table to add my food to the order. Of course I opted for the Cuban sandwich, but also decided to add a café con leche after being convinced there was enough Spanish being yelled out in the kitchen area that it would probably work out pretty well. What happened next though was inexplicable…
When the food arrived we were definitely excited; everything looked really good and I quickly went for a bite of my Cuban. It actually was really good and I took a couple more bites and was thinking “this was a good sandwich… but there something wrong”.
So I started looking at the sandwich a bit closer and was very confused when I noticed this rather bright yellow cheese on the sandwich and I immediatly thought “this isn’t Swiss cheese… this is… I think… American cheese?” To be honest I wasn’t sure because no self-respecting Cuban place would use American cheese on their sandwich and again, this was a Tampa staple. I asked Ambre about her cuban and it also had this mystery American cheese on it and we both looked at each other confused as we didn’t recall the menu saying it had American cheese on it and I think that would’ve jumped out if it had. Now I should be clear, this didn’t ruin the sandwich, it still had a nice crunch from the bread, the ham was a bit stronger than the pork but still solid, the thing is it made the sandwich different in a way that clearly wasn’t better, and the strangeness of it all left me confused. Honestly I don’t know if that’s how they normally serve their sandwiches or it was just a one off, but it was definitely off-putting for someone who really cares about the construction of thier cubans, as I happen to at the moment.
The rest of the food was fine. The café con leche was pretty good; certainly met my expectations on that one, and we also had some fries which were also OK. At the end of the day we definitely enjoyed the meal, but I have to say that given the situation with the cheese, I don’t think I would go there on a regular basis if that’s really how things go down in the sandwich shops of West Tampa.
