Elena Ruz Valdés-Fauli And Her Sandwich

It is difficult to research the life of Elena Ruz Valdés-Fauli outside the context of her namesake Cuban sandwich–and vice versa. The two subjects are inseparable, though Elena Ruz herself left her native Cuba behind as many did during the Revolution. Born in 1909, she was 18 or 19 years old when, as a frequent customer at Havana restaurant El Carmelo, she began ordering a special off-menu sandwich of her own design. Served in the same sweet, eggy bread as the Medianoche (midnighter) sandwich–sometimes called Pan Suave (sweet bread) or simply Pan de Medianoche–her sandwich consisted of cream cheese, thin-sliced turkey, and strawberry jam.

The story goes that she ordered it so many times that she got tired of explaining the ingredients to every waiter and suggested that El Carmelo simply put it on the menu for her. Upon her return–with her fiancée and her mother acting as a chaperone–she was surprised to find her name “in lights.” As she explained to a Miami Herald writer later in life, the restaurant had put up a neon sign reading “Ask for an Elena Ruz. Delicious sandwich. 25 cents.”

She was delighted, her mother/chaperone was horrified, and–while history does not record whether that fiancée was the same sugar mill owner Eduardo Ulacia that she would go on to marry–I like to think that a man who owned a sugar mill could not help but be charmed by a young woman who championed such a sweet sandwich.

Elena Ruz would have been around 50 years old when Castro took power in 1959, her sandwich just over 30. As people of means, she and her husband were able to exile in style, spending 9 years in Spain before moving to Florida and, eventually, Costa Rica. In Spain, and in Florida, the sandwich bearing her name had preceded her. Wherever Cubans went in their post-Revolution exodus, they brought the sandwich with them. And though some Cuban restaurateurs in Florida report that the sandwich has waned in popularity in recent years, a respect for tradition keeps it on their menus.

In Chicago, not as many Cuban restaurant menus bear an Elena Ruz sandwich. However, 1492 Cuban Fusion Cafe, in the majority Latin American, largely Puerto Rican Humboldt Park neighborhood, does serve the sandwich and I was able to try their version early this month.

I went there on a Saturday morning, with Mindy and our son Ian along to help me sample a bit more of the menu than I could take on solo. I am a sucker for Cuban coffee, and had a Cortado to help shake off some of the previous evening’s lethargy. Ian went straight for the Cuban sandwich (not pictured)–I taught him well–and Mindy and I shared a pastelito, (guava pastry), maduros (fried sweet plantains), an empanada (hand pie) and an order of bistec encebollado (steak and onions) in addition to my sandwich.

The Elena Ruz… didn’t wow me. Made on a soft, sweet, eggy-yellow bread roll, it featured a thick swipe of cream cheese, a thin layer of strawberry jam, and a leaf or two of entirely inoffensive green leaf lettuce around a thick slice or two of some of the most gelatinous, fake-looking turkey I’ve ever experienced. The sandwich was fine, don’t get me wrong, and the house-made potato chips that came with it were crunchy and tasty. The strawberry jam was almost a non-entity, while the cream cheese entirely overtook the mild and quivering slab of turkey meat.

The rest of what we ordered at 1492 was fine, good even. And perhaps on another day the sandwich might agree with me more. But on that morning, with that particular sandwich, I left unimpressed.

DIY ’til I Die

Of course I was going to make my own version. It’s November, a month when I do not lack for freshly-roasted turkey to slice up and put in sandwiches, and it’s just cold enough outside to make baking my own Medianoche bread rewarding in multiple ways. Cream cheese and strawberry jelly are, of course, never hard to come by.

Cream cheese on the bottom half of this homemade bread, strawberry jam on the top, slices of freshly roasted turkey breast between. I buttered it and pressed it and…

I didn’t care for it. I almost didn’t care enough to make another and get a better photograph than this.

It’s… turkey is a mild meat, and while this turkey was very good it was not very salty or savory or memorable, being a “practice turkey” that I cooked in the run-up to Thanksgiving in order to have a turkey carcass to make stock from. The bread is soft and sweet, brushed with egg wash to give it a deepy brown, burnished exterior, and it’s good bread, it really is. But it’s mildly sweet, and then there’s the sweetness of the strawberry jam on top of that, the slightly sour creaminess of the cream cheese, and the moist, soft, mildly savory turkey breast… I found myself crying out for a pickle, some mustard, something chewy, some kind of contrast in flavor or texture.

In retrospect, 1492’s version was better than mine. At least, that first one. Eventually, I did try again.

This time I used a slightly more assertively seasoned deli turkey in lieu of my preferred fresh-roasted, as this sandwich really needed something, a core to center the rest of the ingredients around. I was a little more generous with the cream cheese, and maybe a touch stingier with the strawberry jam.

And after I pressed the sandwich hot and crisp, I opened it back up and put in a few entirely inoffensive pieces of green leaf lettuce.

If I could not improve upon 1492’s version, I figured, I could at least match it. And I think I did.

But all things considered, I’d rather have a Medianoche.

That sweet bread cries out for some pungent mustard, sour pickles, aromatic pork, and salty ham. Now this is a sandwich.