I carry with me, at any given time, a decent amount of shame. Who doesn’t? We all have topics we nervously skirt around and facts about ourselves we hope never see the light of day. I am no different. And for the last four years, one of the biggest sources of my Miami-related shame has lived at 3501 SW 8th Street and taken the form of a palatial green restaurant called Versailles, the most famous Cuban restaurant in Miami—probably the entire country.
See—the thing is—I’ve never been. Not once. Never. I’ve only ever driven by the perpetual crowd outside and wondered what was behind those doors. Though it feels good to finally say out loud, it’s embarrassing. I’m from South Florida and have lived in Miami for the last four years. During that time, I’ve been well aware of Versailles, a culinary and (sometimes) political institution since 1971 and a landmark of Miami’s Cuban immigrant population.
I know, I know.
I was going to go—honestly. It’s always been on my list, but somehow kept getting bumped further and further down. Weeks turned to months turned to years. Eventually, I told myself. I’ve had my fair share of Cuban sandwiches, right? What’s the rush? Just one more episode of The Office. And so it went for over 1,460 days.
Until yesterday.
On Sunday, July 22, I woke up and said: no más. It ends today. The charade is over. I am brave and strong and fond of all things pork and I can do this.
About ten minutes into being ignored at the Versailles ventanita, though, my confidence was fading. What was suppose to be a quick coffee during our 15-minute wait to be seated quickly turned into an effort to get noticed on par with (and about as successful as) my high school dating career. There is a subtle art to the ventanita—a Spanish name for the sidewalk coffee window common in Cuban culture—and the Versailles ventanita is notoriously bustling. It looks easy enough: one walks up, orders something to sip on or eat and proceeds to sip or eat or both while possibly carrying on a casual conversation about the weather or engaging in some decent chisme. But it is far simpler in explanation than execution. For some. The man next to me leaned on the counter and immediately got a kiss on the cheek from an employee and the quite possibly telepathic customer to my left was brought two coladas without uttering a single word. Versailles has had regulars so long that the regulars’ children are now regulars and it was clear they were much better at it than I, who stood sweaty and confused, which, admittedly, is my default setting.
Noticing the drops starting to pour down my face, a server finally took pity and slung two café con leches my way. The ventanita ordeal ended up taking so long that we missed the hostess call our name, which was a tad embarrassing since the hostess stand is operated with military precision. Much of Versailles seems to be run that way. If the ventanita is ruled by chaos, the dining room is governed by order. It is less about hospitality than it is about efficiency. This is not your charmingly aloof American diner. The Versailles front of house staff are basically synchronized swimmers who have swapped the pool and swimsuits for caffeine and meat. There are layers and layers of personnel ensuring things run smoothly—from generals down to foot soldiers. When the hostess finally calls our name, we are rushed inside the clanking dining room, quickly passed to a sort of second-string hostess who escorts us approximately 20-feet before transferring us to yet another hostess who finishes the job. They all use walkie-talkies, which makes them look a bit like the secret service. One gets the impression there is a Versailles jail somewhere on the grounds, reserved for those customers who miss their names at the hostess stand or use words like “gluten-free.”
Versailles is bigger than it looks from the outside. There are somewhere between three and four trillion dining rooms. It is hard to tell thanks to a series of mirrors and see-through walls that warp any sense of depth-perception and create an optical illusion that makes it look like, perhaps, Versailles extends all the way to West Palm Beach.
Our server, Corina, arrived fast and got down to business. We started with fufú con masitas, fried pork chunks scattered around a mound of plantain mash. It was delicious. The tiny chunks of pork have been fried to a perfect crunch and the mashed plantains served as a comfy pillow for it all. The place was packed but the food came out under ten minutes. However stunning the front of house staff is, whatever is going on in that kitchen must be straight-up wizardry.
Versailles’ menu is essentially a novella and, when finally deadlifted from the table, revealed a ton of options, from the must-order croquetas to braised goat. I was already intimidated and one particularly menacing walkie-talkie man named Nelson kept glaring at me through a window—perhaps tipped off that we already had one strike against us—so I decided to keep it simple and go with the Cuban mainstay: chicken and yellow rice. My dining companion opted for the imperial rice, which sounded like it may be delivered to the table via cannon (and was coincidently about the size of a civil war cannonball).
The food was brought to the table by yet another new employee, a fit young man in black. It is clear why poor Corina was sitting this part out when the plates hit the table. They are heavy enough to tear a bicep. To-go boxes were mercifully provided by, yet again, an entirely new server, leaving me worried that Corina was perhaps trapped somewhere under a small pile of menus and unfinished imperial rice.
I left eight months pregnant with carbohydrates and with enough leftovers for myself and the next three generations of my unborn children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Still, I willed myself to grab two pastelitos on the way out. They are made fresh every day in the Versailles bakery and spend approximately .0001 milliseconds in the display counter before they are flung into a small white box and sent out into every corner of Miami-Dade County.
Finally crossing Versailles off my list was, to every part of me except the part currently being strangled by my belt, a relief. Have I suddenly become a more official Miamian? Not really. I still, on occasion, use my turn signal and generally arrive to engagements five minutes early. I can’t salsa or stay up past midnight either. I’ve also recently started listening to Bruce Hornsby somehow? So, no. Versailles has not changed me. But it did feed me. And it did a hell of a job too.
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