The Popular Mexican Sandwich Named After The Street Where It Originated

You may have thought the limits of overstuffed culinary items were reached when Americans invented the bacon cheeseburger filled with mac and cheese, Snickers-stuffed pickles, or any of the craziest food trends of the 2010s. But Mexico has the United States beat on this one. The torta cubana sandwich, also simply called the cubana, is known for combining basically every available meat, cheese, and vegetable — and somehow, still making it work.

There's a lot of freedom in building the torta cubana of your dreams. A classic cubana will pack on a lot of pork, from cut-up hot dogs to chorizo, bacon, milanesa, and ham, but you can also add on egg, avocado, lettuce, tomato, jalapeños, and one or more cheeses to make the sandwich appropriately challenging to take a bite of. It's important to note that though they sound similar, this is not the same as the ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickle, and salami-based chef-approved cubano sandwich (which is also delicious).

So, with this variety of ingredients, what was the sandwich named for? There are a few familiar stories, but the most popular is that it derived its name from the Calle Republica de Cuba in Mexico City — the street where it was born in the 1950s. The exact torta shop that gave the world the gift of this wild creation, however? That remains uncertain.

The street-name origin story for the torta cubana is pretty common for a few reasons. The street on which it was said to have been invented is well-traveled due to its location only a few blocks from the National Palace. The amount of foot traffic may have made it easy for both the sandwich and the story to spread — but the number of shops strewn along the Calle Republica de Cuba may have caused the details to become lost in the process, with varying shops making competing claims of invention. The street-name story may make a lot of logical sense, but the exact truth may always be lost to history — and it isn't the only proposed origin story of the torta cubana: There are a couple of slightly more far-fetched ideas. 

The first is that the sandwich is named after Fidel Castro's home country, and he invented it during his exile in Mexico from 1955 to 1956 before becoming the prime minister of Cuba and a famous communist revolutionary. Others say it's called the cubana because of its parallelity with Cuban women, in that they have everything you need or want.

On your next trip to Mexico, add taste-testing a torta cubana to your list of things to do in Mexico City — and be sure to ask your cashier or server what they think the true origin story is. An added benefit of this filling sandwich? Making one at home is a great way to avoid food waste by using whatever you have for a unique and flavor-packed lunchtime meal.