Go beyond the Cuban sandwich at these Colorado Cuban restaurants, bakeries

Among the myriad Latin cuisines available in Colorado, Cuban food is often lumped in with the likes of Mexican fare, which is heavy on spicy peppers, salsa and hot sauce. But local restaurateurs in the small but mighty Cuban food scene say that is a grave misconception.

“The funny thing about Cuban food is that people always assume it’s spicy hot … but our food is not spicy at all,” said Kristy Socarrás, founder of Cuba Cuba restaurant. “The joke with Cubans is that we don’t even own pepper shakers.”

That’s not to say the food isn’t flavorful. Though most Americans are familiar with the Cuban sandwich, traditional Cuban cuisine expands far beyond that to feature succulent roasted and stewed meats, sweet and savory stuffed pastries, and staple sides like rice, beans, congri (a mix of rice and beans) and plantains. For seasonings, Cubans use healthy helpings of citrus and garlic to infuse the essence of the tropical island into their cuisine.

“We use sour orange and lemon and lime and regular oranges and orange juice,” Socarrás said. “There’s a lot of meat, a lot of plantains, everything paired with rice and beans.”

According to Socarrás, it all starts with sofrito, a mixture of sautéed onions, red and green bell peppers, garlic and oil that she likened to the Cuban mirepoix. That lays the aromatic foundation for meats to shine in traditional dishes like ropa vieja, shredded beef served in a tomato-forward sauce, and lechon, roasted pork.

Socarrás, who was raised in Miami, helped introduce Denverites to Cuban cuisine in 2001 when she opened the first Cuba Cuba restaurant in Civic Center. The business has since grown to include six eateries stretching from North Denver to Castle Rock, each mixing hundreds of Cuba’s original cocktail, the minty mojito, along the way.

Over the last 25 years, Socarrás has seen both palates and the local food scene expand. Where plates like vaca frita — flank steak marinated in a garlic and citrus mojo sauce and then seared until crispy — used to confuse early customers, it is now one of Cuba Cuba’s most popular items. Whenever guests ask Socarrás to choose a dish for them, she points them to picadillo al caballo, a ground beef and potatoes dish served over white rice with a fried egg on top and sweet plantains on the side.

“You have the sweet and the salty and the fried egg and you cut it all up, and it is to me heaven. It is my comfort food,” she said.

Folks cooking at the forefront of the Cuban culinary scene spoke of doing so to connect to their heritage and provide a taste of home to others who live locally. Though there isn’t a huge Cuban community in metro Denver, the flavors resonate beyond cultural borders, said Lauren Hernandez, manager at Cuba Bakery & Cafe in Aurora. Opened in 2013, the eatery serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, alongside sweet and savory Cuban pastries, desserts, coffee, and fruit milkshakes called batidos.

“I haven’t found a client that tastes our food that says that they don’t like it. That’s why we do it,” she said.

Enrique Socarrás, brother of Kristy Socarrás, is making his own mark on the scene following 17 years helping run Cuba Cuba. The menu at Jama Miami Cuban, his restaurant located at Freedom Street Social food hall in Arvada, is an ode to his upbringing in Miami.

“It excites me to capture an era that I feel Cuban food really came together in Miami,” he said. “I have these wonderful recipes that traveled the 90 miles, and they just melted together in one city. It was vibrant and it was fun. I wanted to tell that story instead of the nostalgic Castro story.”

One of Enrique’s specialties is lechon, inspired by whole-pig roasts that his family did during gatherings growing up, usually around the holidays. Jama Miami Cuban’s version features slow-roasted pork shoulder served with garlic mojo and pickled onions. Though it’s available year-round, Enrique will bring out la caja china, a box that emulates a roasting pit, in the spring and summer to offer guests the full experience.

A large portion of Jama Miami Cuban’s menu is dedicated to sandwiches, which all come served on house-made Cuban bread. Those, of course, include an Original Cubano with pork belly, ham, Swiss cheese and pickles, as well as lesser-known handhelds like the Croqueta Preparada (ham croquetas smashed in Cuban bread and topped with ham, Swiss cheese and pickles).

“What’s special about Cuban bread is it has this really crisp shell with a super light, airy, fluffy interior … . I think it has a lot to do with the humidity below sea level in Miami and Cuba,” Enrique said. He tried close to 40 different recipes before nailing it at altitude.

Denverites will be able to get a taste without leaving city limits when Jama Miami Cuban opens its second location in a forthcoming Sun Valley food hall later this year. Until then, there’s a Cuban bakery in Five Points that has made a splash since it opened its first brick-and-mortar in January.

Café Tres is the brainchild of Mike Solis, another Miami transplant who grew up around his family’s multigenerational bakery there. The shop specializes in pastelitos, which are puff pastries stuffed with sweet and savory ingredients. What makes them authentically Cuban is the addition of lard in the pastry dough, Solis said.

Café Tres’ most popular flavor is guava and cream cheese, followed closely by carne, which features a picadillo stuffing. The bakery also serves Cuban-style coffee made with the signature espumita, a whipped sugar and coffee paste that serves as the base of each cup.

For Solis, the business is both an homage to his family and also something of a selfish endeavor. After moving away from home for the first time to Denver in 2014, Solis realized that he was missing an essential part of his morning routine — that is, sharing pastelitos and coffee with his family. After the pandemic, his cravings for the pastries inspired him to bake for a series of pop-ups that were well received and eventually led to the opening of Café Tres.

“You don’t realize what you would do for a little comfort of home,” Solis said. “I’m here with a business, four years in, and a brick-and-mortar later just to feel like I’m finally at home and I’m comfortable.”

North of Denver, Elvira’s Cuban Cuisine began offering that simple luxury to Loveland residents in February 2025. Owner Melissa Lopez Daniels acquired a love of cooking from her father and grandmother, and began her formal entry into the culinary world as a cottage baker in 2020 selling pastelitos, pan cubano (Cuban bread) and pan sobao, a Puerto Rican sweet bread, directly to consumers.

Today, she operates out of a commissary kitchen, allowing for deliveries via DoorDash and Uber Eats on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Each day, she features a different menu of Cuban and Puerto Rican staples that she makes using recipes from her grandmother, Elvira.

Her top seller? “Hands down, first are the Cuban sandwiches,” Lopez Daniels said. “It’s not unheard of for me to whip out 20 of those in a day.”

Like others, Lopez Daniels bakes all the bread herself. The recipe for her Cuban empanadillas dough is said to be more than 150 years old. “These recipes have been in my family for generations,” Lopez Daniels said.

South of Denver, Colorado Springs has become a hotspot for Cuban cuisine, again thanks to locals’ desire to stay connected to their roots. The city is home to nearly a half-dozen specialized restaurants serving a community of roughly 1,400 Cuban residents, which speaks to both the entrepreneurial spirit of that community and a broader local appetite for authentic Caribbean cuisine, said Joe Aldaz, president and CEO of the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.