The focus is on the food, not the décor – although I really covet
the great ‘70s-era chairs. The owners have put a few boxes of plastic flowers
in the windows, tacked up some framed motivational posters and hung a Jesus
portrait above the fire extinguisher.
Since it's in the name, let's start with the Cuban
sandwich ($4.25 for the seven-incher, $5.25 for nine). If you've got the
right stuff, a Cuban is hard to mess up – and Cubans on the Run has the right
stuff: ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, mustard and pickle slices. I hate when
you order a Cuban and it's cold in the middle. Here, the bread is crispy and the
filling is hot all the way through.
For you fans of the remix, Cubans on the Run has several variations.
There's the Hawaiian Cuban ($4.99 for seven inches) which adds pineapple
slices and the ham croquette sandwich (ditto on price) which slips in a
breaded ham fritter, adding a little creaminess and smoke.
I also tried the chicken sandwich ($4.99 for seven
inches), which presses chicken in garlic sauce with mayo and Swiss cheese.
Again, the bread is grilled and crisp. I’m a thigh man who generally thinks
that chicken breast strips are too dry, but these aren't so bad.
Black
beans and rice ($1.69) are a little salty, but the beans themselves are at
that point where they’re tender but haven’t disintegrated. The big
disappointment was the homemade chicken
soup ($2.25); bland and oddly gray. It did
have big pieces of chicken, but it also had at least one bone.
For $1.50, there’s the stuffed
potato ball (papa rellena). If you’ve never had one, it’s mashed potatoes
wrapped around meat (pork and beef, in this case) and deep fried. Just know
that the meat is more of a seasoning than a filling. The creamy potatoes are
the main ingredient.
Sure you can get your Mountain
Dew or Diet Coke, but you might
as well go Cuban and get a can of Jupiña
or Ironbeer ($1.25). Jupina is a
sweet pineapple soda. Ironbeer is a little harder to nail down. Some folks
compare it to Dr. Pepper, but to me,
it’s more like an orange soda topped off with cola.
Dish: Cubans on the Run closes at 7 p.m. and as closing
gets closer, the kitchen starts to run out of stuff. The ham and pork
tamales ($1.89) and the Spanish soup of white beans, pork, ham,
potato and collard greens ($2.25) both sound great, but the lunch rush ate them
all. I guess that's a sign they're good, but by dinner time, I had to do
without.
Damage: Someday, I'm going to go back and try the steam table
full of hot meals like steak and onions (bistec encebollado) and fried pork
chunks, but those are a couple bucks beyond my self-imposed $5 limit, so
tomorrow is another day.
Decision: On my
way out of Cubans on the Run, I saw a guy in the uniform of a nearby restaurant
chain coming in. That’s always a good sign, when a competing customer would
rather pay than try to scrounge a free meal from his own kitchen. Just get
there early if you want the full menu.
