Meet the Winners of the 3rd Annual
National Cuban Sandwich Festival!
Stone Soup
Company
1st Place Traditional
2nd Place Popular
Category
What is your name?
Ilya Benjamin Goldberg
Name of your Restaurant?
The Stone Soup Company
Where is it located? 1517 East 7th Ave
YBOR CITY, FL 33605
Do you have a website?
www.stonesoupco.com
What did winning this contest mean
to you? It meant being part of history in
the great city of Tampa. It also meant for a
benchmark for us to be judged against those
with generations of experience.
How long have you been making Cuban
Sandwiches? About four years. We know
some have been making Cuban sandwiches
for 100 years but we have found a way to
make it better. As much as we respect them,
and we are just happy to be here.
What makes your Cuban sandwich so
special?
Love. We love making Cuban sandwiches. It’s
completely engineered, from roasting the pork
overnight, to the baker bringing us fresh bread
daily, to the way we place the pickles and the
way we make the cut. It’s consistently the best
Cuban in Tampa, the state of Florida, and the
USA. There is one more key ingredient that
few businesses have, KARMA. We donate all
unused ingredients in our Core business of
soups to charity. As we sell a cup we track the
sales and match those sales with donations.
To date we have given over 39,000 cups of
soup to local Tampa shelters via Tampa Bay
Harvest. This is the best form of feel good,
attention, publicity, and good will anyone can
get. When you give you get so much more,
this transcends the Best Cuban or the Best
Soup (creative loafing 2013) it makes us just
the best at being good citizens.
Do you think you have a chance at
winning again next year?
Absolutely. There is nothing like this from
Tampa to Miami and all across the USA.
But we haven’t decided if we are competing
because we just feel like we have already won.
Docho’s Hot off
the Press
1st Place – Popular Vote
2nd Place - Traditional
3rd Place – Non Traditional
What is your name? Dave and Debbie Guy
Name of your Restaurant?
Food Truck- Dochos Hot off the Press
Where is it located?
We move to where our fans are
Do you have a website? We prefer facebook,
like us at Docho’s Concession
What did winning this contest mean to
you?Winning this contest was amazing, it
means all of the care and love we put into our
sandwich is being recognized. Some people are
all about the money, we are all about making
people smile.
How long have you been making Cuban
Sandwiches? We have been making Cuban
Sandwiches for 4 years.
What makes your Cuban sandwich so
special? For some people it is just a sandwich
but not for us. We wanted to make sure we did
it right. We researched every item we put on our
sandwich from the bread to the special mustard
that we have shipped in, it can only be purchased
in one place in the world THAT is why our
sandwich is so special.
Do you think you have a chance at
winning again next year? We would hope we
have a chance of winning but we have seen it in
the past where a winner in the past believes they
are entitled to the win, we are not like that we
will go into this with the same fears, anticipation
and excitement we do every year and hope our
quality and love shows.
Regardless of how we finish next year we are
proud of our accomplishments over the past 2
years. This year we placed in all 3 categories.
And first with our fans (that is what is important)
this is a first time for this contest. We do not
take that lightly.
Dulce Café
1st Place NonTraditional
What is your name?
Diane Agudelo & Hector Vega
Name of your Restaurant?
Dulce Cafe
Where is it located? 3310 W
Kennedy Blvd Tampa, FL 33609
Do you have a website?
www.dulcecafebakery.com
What did winning this contest
mean to you?
It was a big achievement because we
are new to the restaurant industry and
when coming in the competition and
competing against well-established
restaurants and experienced
competitors, I doubted we could win.
How long have you been making
Cuban Sandwiches?
Not very long at all, just under a year
we started in July 2013
What makes your Cuban
sandwich so special?
Our sandwich is very special because it
is a pastry. Our “Puffy Cuban” has all of
the deliciousness of a Cuban sandwich
wrapped up in a flaky and light pastry.
Our ingredients are high quality and
we use our own in-house slow roasted
pork.
Do you think you have a chance at
winning again next year?
Absolutely, I think that knowing what
to expect we can even compete better
on all other categories.