If Miami made its own version of The Brave Little Toaster, the star of the movie would definitely be a planchita with a mapo as its sidekick. And if you want to see the hardest working planchita in the city, go to Little Havana and pop your head into Sanguich. As a small shop dedicated exclusively to sandwiches, they know how to use a sandwich press. And they always brush their bread with lard before pressing layers of pork, pickles, mustard, and swiss cheese between them.

Why are we telling you to drive to Redland? Because it’s where the best pan con minuta we’ve ever eaten is. Reyes is a big open-air straw hut that sells local produce, honey, and fresh juice. But you’re coming here for Cuban food. Everything is hyper-local. The minuta is from a nearby fish farm, and you can thank Redland pigs for your lechon. Plus, portions are huge. They give you so much shredded vaca frita, it’s hard to close the styrofoam box it comes in.

Cafe La Trova is many things. It’s a Little Havana bar with excellent cocktails, a venue for live music, and one of Miami’s best Cuban restaurants. You’ll also find a mixture of people inside: locals celebrating a birthday and tourists—some come straight from the airport and leave their rolling bags with the host. We don’t blame them. The drinks are cold and the arroz con pollo is one of Miami’s best. But there’s one important thing Cafe La Trova always is: fun.

If you’re from Miami, there’s a good chance you formed core memories here, sucking down cold batidos through narrow straws, pressing your face against the steam counter to get a better look at the lechon’s pig head, and finding a picnic table by the fans while your parents ordered. Since then, a lot has changed in Miami, but not at the Palacio De Los Jugos on West Flagler. There are just a lot more locations now—and with good reason.

The service isn’t perfect, but Habana Vieja nails classic Cuban dishes like few others in town, including the city’s most mouth-puckering vaca frita. If guavas are in season, order the guava shells with cream cheese for dessert. It’s an old school Cuban dessert with pieces of guava simmered in sugar next to a triangular chunk of cream cheese—the epitome of Cuban cuisine’s love of sweet and salty combinations—and the great grandfather of all those pastelitos de guayaba y queso we love.

For as much as the Cuban diaspora changed Miami, its descendants are now transforming Cuban food. Chug’s is an excellent example of the sort of Cuban-American cuisine that feels so specific to our city. The pop’s frita comes with a tangy blue cheese salsa, the latkes are made with malanga, and their mariquitas are served with a French onion dip. But they win us over with a peeled banana. That’s exactly what their abuelas plate is—the kind of Cuban food you can usually only find at home.

Islas Canarias has the best croquetas in town. Unlike a lot of ham croquetas we’ve eaten, Islas' aren’t a mixture of ground mystery meat. Biting through their crispy outer layer reveals thin pieces of fresh chives, a sight you almost never see in any other croqueta. Their vaca frita is also seasoned perfectly—citrusy, salty, and so juicy. Plus, their moros come with chunks of fatty pork. The dining room is always packed, and the walls are lined with bottles of Spanish anise.

Like so many Cuban restaurants in Miami, El Rey De Las Fritas has the look and feel of an American diner—like Miami’s version of Johnny Rockets. But instead of a jukebox, there’s a coin-operated mechanical horse in the corner. And their version of a burger is a Cuban frita—the best in town. These patties are rusted red with a smoky chorizo and beef blend that’s topped with crunchy potato sticks and placed between two Cuban bread buns.

Cubans are known for many things, and bread is undeniably one of them. Cuban bread has a thin crust, but it’s also soft in the middle. There’s no other bread like it, and this Hialeah bakery specializes in everything bread-related. Their Cuban sandwich is the size of your forearm, and it doesn’t just crunch when you bite into it. It plays your molars like a piano yet somehow manages to remain soft and fluffy beneath the surface. The croquetas are so good too.

It’s not usually a good sign when you see tourists wearing Panama hats and awkwardly wielding cigars outside a Cuban restaurant. Expectations are even lower when that restaurant is in South Beach. But it turns out that Havana 1957 isn’t just popular because of its location on Española Way—the food here is very good. Service is fast and personable (unlike nearby tourist traps) and the mojitos are refreshing.

Lots of people come to Enriquetas for their Cuban sandwiches. But it’s a solid spot for more than just one sandwich. You can order a buttery tostada at the ventanita and dip it into your cafe con leche for a quick breakfast, or grab a pan con bistec at their counter for lunch. But what truly makes Enriqueta’s so special is its location in the middle of Wynwood and Edgewater, two neighborhoods that are growing like Everglades pythons. It's one of the last old school spots left in the area.

This Westchester Cuban diner is known for one thing: the bistec rio cristal. It’s a thin beef steak (let that “beef steak” translation sink in) with one giant side of papitas. It’s why people come here—a pile of fries the size of Mt. Tropical Park that makes you question if there really is a steak under all those potato twigs. But it’s there, juicy, and layered with onions and parsley. Some people like to spurt ketchup all over the top, but these are not finger fries.

La Carreta is Versailles’ less famous sister restaurant. And while Versailles has a big-city feel, La Carreta is more rural. The ceiling is lined with straw hatching, the servers wear guayaberas, and it’s more casual. The place is huge—and so are the portions. The vaca frita is shredded into long delicious strips, and the maduros are crunchy around the edges. The mariquitas are crisp, and the mojo is so strong, it pricks the tip of your tongue.

Food by the pound is such a beautiful concept, and Blue Sky nails it. This restaurant is basically one long steam counter with over 30 delicious choices. It’s a great option if you’ve been tasked with finding food for your cousin’s baby shower. But if you don’t like loud family parties (we understand), the $12.95 dinner gets you a big styrofoam box full of vaca frita strips, rice, thick black beans, and maduros—which you can eat alone even though you’ll never be able to finish it in one sitting.

There are tons of great Cuban restaurants in Hialeah, and this is one of them. Morro castle is known for their fritas and churros, which are good, but we really love their vaca frita and elena ruz. You just have to know how to order here, because your choice of side makes all the difference. Order the vaca frita with yuca and mojo. Then dip that fried flank steak in the mojo sauce and enjoy it with a piece of yuca in one bite.

Here’s our Luis Galindo rule: you come here on Thursdays, sit down at the long counter by the sandwich station, and order the ajiaco a la criolla. It’s a hearty Cuban soup with pork, yuca, malanga, platanos, and chunks of corn still on the cob. This ajiaco is a little thick, and unlike Colombian ajiaco, it doesn’t have any potatoes. We know this sounds counterintuitive, but it’s the perfect food to get you sweating and cooled down on a hot summer day.

It’s easy to walk by this Little Havana spot and assume it’s a grocery store—which it is—but just past the gum sticks, next to the wine aisle, you’ll find a small counter with a few tables. Here, you can listen to the beeps and boops of the checkout register while you eat ternilla—beef rib meat so tender it falls apart faster than the lies you tell yourself about how much you’ll accomplish this weekend.