Polydish city guide
Best Arroz a la cubana in New York
“A Spanish rice dish named for a cuisine that never made it. Fried egg, fried banana, rice, tomato sauce.”
What the real thing tastes like
Arroz a la cubana (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈroθ a la kuˈβana]) ("Cuban-style rice") or arroz cubano is a rice dish popular in Spain, the Philippines, and parts of Latin America. Its defining ingredients are rice and a fried egg. A fried banana (plantain or other cooking bananas) and tomato sauce (tomate frito) are so frequently used that they are often considered defining ingredients too. Despite the name, the dish does not exist in Cuban cuisine and its origins are not definitively known. It may possibly originate from a Spanish misinterpretation of common Cuban meals of eating rice with stews and a fried egg when Cuba was still a Spanish colony.
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Arroz a la cubana is a Spanish rice dish that doesn't actually exist in Cuba—a name born from colonial misunderstanding, perhaps, when Spanish colonizers watched Cubans eat rice alongside stews and fried eggs and called it their own. What defines it now is simpler: rice crowned with a fried egg, usually joined by fried banana and tangy tomato sauce. It's travelled from Spain to the Philippines and across Latin America, each place making it their own.
Order it here when it has
- simple defining ingredients
- widespread popularity across regions
- adaptable across cuisines
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