Cubans on the Run

Cubans on the Run (https://www.cubansontherun.com/) is a small, casual Cuban restaurant located in Casselberry, but practically on the edge of Longwood.  Yesid Saavedra opened it as a small sandwich shop with his late father-in-law Jose Torres in 1993, but it was destroyed by Hurricane Charlie in 2004.  Undaunted, they rebuilt and reopened it as a larger space, with an expanded kitchen and a fuller menu to match, adding Cuban entrees beyond sandwiches.

My wife and I have enjoyed Cubans on the Run for years, but because it is closed on Sundays, sometimes we don’t make it there when we get the bright idea to go.  I’ve never eaten in the dining room, even in all the years before the pandemic, but it’s a fantastic restaurant to pick up takeout.  They have one of the best Cuban sandwiches in town — not as large as College Park Cafe‘s Cubano, but definitely one of the better ones in the Orlando area.  Those two are my Top Two, for sure.

My wife doesn’t share my obsession with sandwiches, but she likes steak much more than I do, believe it or not.  At Cuban restaurants, she almost always orders a thin grilled steak, like this one here ($10.99), served with chimichurri sauce on the side, and topped with a mound of thin-sliced grilled onions she hates, but I love.  I am always glad to scoop up her onions.  She requested white rice with it but got yellow rice, which she was fine with.  Those are tostones on top — savory, starchy, salty, crunchy fried plantains, and a cup of red beans underneath that I would end up eating.  The steak is very thin, but it was a huge portion.  There  was a second entire piece of steak underneath that one, almost the same size! 

I am making a conscious effort to eat a little healthier in 2021, so on this visit, I ordered chicken fricasee for the first time.  This herculean portion was only $7.50.  I requested dark meat, so I got a huge chicken thigh with the bone still in and the skin still on, a huge leg, a couple of chunks of potato from the stew, a bed of rich yellow rice, a cup of red beans, and four maduros — sweet fried plantains, definitely a Top Ten favorite food of mine.  Sometimes you order chicken and it’s disappointingly dry, which is one reason I tend to prefer dark meat, especially thighs.  This was perfect chicken — so moist, juicy, tender, rich, flavorful.  It was prepared so well, I feel inspired to try to recreate my own version at home.  Loved this chicken.  One of the best chicken dishes I’ve eaten in the Orlando area, without a doubt!

But for the purposes of this review, I couldn’t go to Cubans on the Run and not order one of their signature sandwiches.  But instead of the traditional Cuban sandwich that Cubans on the Run is acclaimed for, I switched it up and got my childhood favorite from Miami, the medianoche (midnight) sandwich ($5.99).  It has all the same ingredients as the Cubano: roast pork, sweet ham, Swiss cheese, yellow mustard, and pickles, only it is served on a sweet, egg-based yellow bread, rather than Cuban bread.  But I’ve had the Cubano before too, and like I said, both are among the finest in Orlando. 

This is a chicharron ($3.75), crispy fried pork with the crunchy skin attached.  This one was harder, drier, and crunchier than I like, but we caught them late on a weekday evening on this particular visit, and usually I go earlier on Saturdays when the chicharrones are fresher and more tender.

My wife and I both love arepas ($3.75), sort of a sandwich made with two sweet corn patties fried on a grill, with melty mozzarella cheese in between them.  Growing up in Miami, you got an arepa from a cart whenever there was an outdoor event, like a fair or festival.  I have recently learned these are often referred to as arepas con choclo, or cachapas, since there are other kinds of arepas (Colombian, Venezuelan, etc.) that aren’t the sweet corn cakes.

These are two perfect churros ($3.25 for the pair), which are doughnut-like pastries that are fried and dusted with cinnamon sugar.  They should be crispy on the outside and moist and cake-like on the inside.  These churros are made fresh, and you can get them with or without cream down their long hollow centers.  I like the cream, but my wife prefers them without.  Guess how we got these!*
*We got them without cream, the way my wife likes.  Fellas, consider this a teaching moment.

I have a hard time going to any Cuban restaurant and not trying my old Miami standards of a beef empanada ($1.85) and one or two croquetas de jamon (75 cents each).

Empanadas are savory pastries, usually filled with some kind of meat wrapped in a half moon-shaped crust, then baked or fried.  Cuban empanadas are wrapped in a flour dough crust, then fried until crispy, flaky, and soft.  I like them the best, especially when they’re stuffed with picadillo, a dish of seasoned ground beef.  This was a nice light empanada, crispy yet soft and yielding, barely greasy, although I wish the ground beef was a little more tomatoey.  (Everyone seasons it a little different, and sometimes you find olives in there, stewed with the picadillo.)

Croquetas are small fritters of diced ham mixed with a rich, creamy bechamel sauce, dipped in bread crumbs, and then fried until crispy and solid, but soft and creamy inside.  I love them, but nobody loves them more than my best friend since childhood, a lifelong Miami resident who is currently blogging about his quest to discover and review Miami’s finest croquetas, in The Croqueta Diaries.  I’m a dabbling dilletante, but consider my dude Captain Croqueta.

And even though Cuban food is not known as spicy food, Cubans on the Run is well-known for their housemade hot sauce.  Usually they will give you one or two tiny plastic cups, even with a big order like this, but this time I remembered to ask to purchase a bottle (I believe it was $5).

I’ve tried several other Cuban restaurants around Orlando, but Cubans on the Run is definitely one of my favorites, and one of the best.  It isn’t far from home, but much too far from work to dash off to for a quick lunch.  Since it is closed on Sundays, that means we can pretty much only ever go on Saturdays or rare mornings after dental appointments nearby.  But as you can see from the hearty, unpretentious, delicious food here, it never disappoints.  Run, don’t walk, to Cubans on the Run!