Vegan Cuban Cuisine: What’s Vegetarian Editorial Review

Vegan Cuban Cuisine proves Cuban food doesn’t need pork to taste like Cuban food. Miami’s first sit-down vegan Cuban spot. Everything on the menu is vegan. No exceptions, no “ask your server,” no separate fryer to worry about. Grew up on croquetas and medianoches and figured going vegetarian meant giving those up? This place argues otherwise, and it argues well.

What’s on the menu

Croquetas anchor the place. Crisp outside, soft inside, the way a real croqueta should be. The Empanada Trio lets you mix three fillings in one order: “Beef,” “Ham” & Cheeze, and “Egg,” each one a plant-based stand-in built to fool you and mostly succeeding. Order the Medianoche and you get jackfruit lechon asado and organic soy ham, pressed with melted cheese, organic pickles, Follow Your Heart mayo, and mustard on a house-made sweet Cuban roll. It’s the sandwich most reviewers point to first. The Croqueta Preparada goes further. Soy ham, melted cheese, vegan mayo, mustard, and two crispy croquetas stacked into one sandwich that eats like a full meal, not a snack.

What to order

Never had a vegan croqueta? Start there for proof the format survives the swap. Actually hungry? Get the Medianoche. It’s the dish that built this restaurant’s reputation. The jackfruit does real work standing in for shredded pork, shredding apart the same way and taking on the mojo seasoning instead of fighting it. Want to sample more than one filling without committing to a full sandwich? That’s what the Empanada Trio is for, and it’s the better order for a first visit.

The kitchen situation

This is a fully vegan kitchen, full stop. Nothing here shares a fryer, a grill, or a prep counter with meat, dairy, or eggs, because none of those ingredients are anywhere in the building. “Vegetarian-friendly” in most of Miami means one salad wedged onto a meat-heavy menu. Not here. This is one of the few kitchens in the city where you don’t have to ask about cross-contact at all. Some items, including the croquetas, come in a gluten-free version too. A real accommodation, not a marketing line, since traditional croquetas lean on wheat-based breading.

Practical notes

Vegan Cuban Cuisine sits at 9640 SW 72nd St, in the Kendall area south of downtown. Open daily, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Call (786) 292-0564, or skip the trip and order through the restaurant’s own site, Uber Eats, or Postmates. It’s counter-service casual. Built for a fast lunch or a sandwich run, not a sit-down date night. Catering runs through the restaurant’s Toast ordering page, if you’re feeding a group that includes non-vegans who won’t notice the difference.

Their own tagline: “Sabor. Cultura. Plantas.” Flavor, culture, plants. They opened as one of the only sit-down vegan Cuban restaurants in the Sunset area, a stretch of Miami where Cuban food usually means the opposite of plant-based. A specialty coffee program runs alongside the food menu too, so it doubles as a coffee stop if you’re just passing through.

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Most vegan restaurants spend half the menu explaining what they had to leave out. This one skips the apology and just hands you the sandwich.