Culinary Historians | Sabores del Pasado: Exploring the Origins of Miami Cuban Restaurant Culture

Event Summary

Date(s): Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Time: 6:00pm-7:30pm
Venue: Downtown Branch of AADL
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Event Description

Throughout U.S. history, restaurants have served a number of vital roles in immigrant communities: they are places where immigrants find work, reminisce about home, build community, and spur economic growth. In fact, restaurants are one of the many factors that have led to the economic and political success of the Cuban American community in South Florida. Join us as we explore the origins of Miami’s Cuban restaurant scenes— moving from the streets of Havana to Miami’s Calle Ocho corridor and beyond— as well as how these restaurants have served food with a side of politics over the years.

Allyson Pérez is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on Cuban restaurants in Miami as community centers where culture, identity, and politics are built among the immigrants who own, run, and patronize them in the past and present, using a mix of ethnographic, oral history, and archival methods.

This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor.

For teens & adults. Held in 4th Floor Program Room.