Pizza Without Borders

At Endless Simmer we are not afraid to cross difficult international borders to answer burning questions like: how do they eat pizza in Cuba??! Yep, you can just call us the Edward Snowden of cheese.

The first time we saw signs for pizza in Havana, we thought: yeah, right, we’re not gonna eat Italian while in Cuba. But then we saw it again and again, and realized this makeshift style of pizza is actually the primary street food here. Tiring of the ubiquitous ham sandwich lunch options, we decided to give Cuban street food pizza a chance.

These simple pizza-style oven are set up on street corners across the country. The ‘za (tomato sauce and cheap cheese layered on a supremely puffy dough) is baked quickly in individual pans…

Then it’s on to the spicing station, for an array of hot sauces and some kind of garlic-onion green sauce, slathered liberally on top of the individual pan pies.

Yep, it’s not Cuban food until it’s covered in hot sauce. Even pizza.

Finally, in exchange for about 20 cents, the pizzaiola slides it onto a piece of cardboard so you can give it a New York-style fold and chow on it while walking down the street.