There is nothing like a Cuban sandwich in Tampa.
While it appears on numerous menus across town, one of the city’s original favorite venues to get one has been closed for years.
Instead, it’s been in Riverview, where Dana Neville spends virtually every day serving sandwiches.
Neville owns the Silver Ring Café in Riverview, which has been open for decades but was a fixture in Ybor City long before it relocated.
“I receive calls from folks all around the country. Do we ship? “They grew up in Tampa,” Neville said of the café’s devoted following. “They grew up; their fathers and grandfathers took them to the Silver in Ybor. Everyone has a great narrative about their memories.”
Neville has a lot of memories too. After all, the Silver Ring has been in the Bay Area since the 1940s, but due to changes in ownership, fluctuating rent costs, and retirements, the original Ybor City location has long ago closed.
Silver Ring has not even been in Tampa for about 15 years.
That was until this year.
“All the old people that we knew and grew up with are coming back,” Nelson Valdes said as he prepared a famed Silver Ring Cuban Sandwich.
Valdes is Silver Ring’s operating partner in Tampa.
He retired from the car business in September and was speaking with his good friend, Tim Booth, who once owned the Silver Ring and is Neville’s uncle.
“We had a couple of shots of tequila and the next thing we know, we’re opening up a Silver Ring,” Valdes went on to say.
After more than a decade away from its hometown, Valdes has launched a brand-new Silver Ring Café in Tampa’s Westshore Plaza food court.
“People are driving from Plant City, St. Petersburg, Crystal River — they’re coming to get a Cuban sandwich from the Silver Ring,” he added.
When word spread that the Silver Ring was back in Tampa, Valdes claimed long queues developed around the food court for hours.
According to Valdes, business has been tremendous because he wanted to maintain the authenticity of what he loved about Silver Ring.
“I drove out to Riverview just to make sure it was the right thing,” he told me. “Man, (it was like) I’m back in Ybor City.”
Valdes said he tried to find a location in Ybor to reopen the café, but rent charges there were three times what he pays here in the mall.
“If I could open in Ybor and found a spot that wasn’t sky high, I would have done it, but the rents are just crazy over there,” he added.
Valdes is just glad he was able to return a piece of Tampa’s culinary history back to the place where it all started.
So, whether you’re in a mall food court or in Riverview, every mouthful takes you back to those pleasant moments.