Eats & Beats: JAMA Miami Cuban at Live at the Vineyards

This portion of the interview above has been edited for length and clarity:

What does "jama" mean?

Enrique Socarras: So jama is a Cuban slang term for food generally used as a verb, meaning to eat, jama, but we fell in love with the word and we thought that it would be a really good way to express what we were doing with the Miami version of Cuban food.

Steve: We were thinking in advance being a morning show that we might find out what you do in the way of baking and pastries and that kind of thing, but you've got some full menu items here. You've got a full menu there.

Enrique: Yeah, yeah. We figured we'd bring you guys some of the new offerings that we'll be having at the new Arvada location, which will be open for breakfast eventually.

Steve: Okay.

Enrique: So we're going to do the traditional pastelitos, croquetas, some breakfast Cuban sandwiches, so we figured we'd bring some down for you guys. We're also going to give you guys one of our iced cafe con leches, which are fire.

Steve: Okay. Well, going down the road. Let's see. Let's see what's up. Let me mention the website, jamacuban.com. That's jamacuban.com.

Abi Clark: Our own Arturo Gomez from the Miami, Cuba or Miami, Florida region, did the broadcasting there. He was what tipped us off to your location, and it's kind of like a walkup situation. Can you talk about what your current layout's like now?

Enrique: Yeah, totally, man. We're based out of ChefReady Kitchens, which is a commissary kitchen where we house our catering company, Soca Culinary. And when we had the idea to launch this concept, we figured we'd beta test it, some sort of market so that we can identify many, many things and kind of tweak things and get 'em right before we went full Monty. And we have a walkup window and we're doing third party deliveries currently. Right now we've shut down to limited hours. We're doing weekends only until we launched a new spot in Arvada, which is coming August 15th.

Steve: Weekends, including August 16th at Balistreri Vineyards.

Abi: I would love to hear a little more about what you're trying to do with this kind of food, because there's many generations, at this point, of Cuban style food. Can you touch on that?

Enrique: Yeah, absolutely. For us, I think the goal is to broaden the audience of Cuban food and make it accessible not only to many demographics, but to all ages and make it a little bit more family friendly. We really do love the vibe of the traditional Cuban restaurants, where you have the bar and the dancing and all that stuff. But we're really focused on the food and we want to make it accessible, quick and easy so that we can stamp this thing out and go to maybe other cities and other states is the goal.

Steve: I'm interested in what you learned through 2020. You said some of the things about third party delivery were really important for anybody who's serving food, and I remember that is that changed everything. It changed everybody's way of doing things.

Enrique: Absolutely, man.

Steve: Check your motivation, all that.

Enrique: I think COVID really put a lock on the way that we order food from home. What I've seen in the industry is that we have restaurants that we're doing maybe 20% takeout sales increased to about 60%. And if we don't adapt as restaurateurs and restaurants, I think we leave a lot of money on the table and we leave a lot of unhappy guests. So our goal was to identify how to be most efficient in that realm without losing sight of feeding the customers that come to visit us.

Steve: Enrique Socarras from JAMA Miami Cuban. The concept we were talking about earlier about Cuban food because it goes back so many generations, but there are sort of waves as the Cuban Miami story has changed over time.

Enrique: Absolutely, man.

Steve: What's your food story, your philosophy?

Enrique: Many, many years ago when I dove into Cuban food, it was really dissecting my grandmother's generation and my grandmother's cookbooks and the family food that came from Cuba and kind of evolved in Miami. But growing up in Miami, I have a different experience than my mom and my grandparents did. And growing up and seeing that food evolve, it was only natural for my approach to also evolve. So what we're really trying to hone in on is the nostalgia and the culture of Miami Cuban, not so much my grandparents Cuban.

Carlos Lando: So the challenge then, I would imagine, has always been how do you maintain enough of the authentic flavors right in the food as you progress, as you come up with a new way of making a traditional dish, for example. People don't open up cans of lechoncito anymore. The big, the lard, right, to cook. It's evolved into vegetables.

Enrique: I think our approach has really been identifying that a lot of the products that are readily available in the Cuban market are what make the food kind of homogenous. And we want to stand out, we want to do things a little bit differently. So we're really taking that scratch cooking approach to things and really diving into recipes to identify what ingredients are available to us here locally that are responsible, sustainable, healthy options to get in there and restructure the way that we approach these recipes and put up food that I personally could feel proud handing 'em down to my daughters that eventually will cook for their kids.

Steve: JAMA Miami Cuban. is going to have a spot in Arvada soon, mid-August. You'll be able to taste them at Live at the Vineyards this year on August 16th. And their website is JAMA Cuban, J-A-M-A, jamacuban.com.

Audio File Music Credit: Harold Lopez-Nussa - Funky, Harold Lopez-Nussa - Hope