He calls it “the lookback.”
It’s a regular thing at Lazaro Santana’s Havana Café food truck, usually over cups of Cuban coffee.
“They’re walking away, taking that first sip and then they stop, and they look down at their cup and then they look back at the trailer and I’m like ‘oh, that’s it! I got ‘em now!’”
And Santana’s Cuban food truck is a kind of monument to looking backwards, a slow-cooking celebration of history, culture, music, and, most of all, of family and food — it smells like espresso and sounds like the Buena Vista Social Club.
The trailer’s vibrant custom paint job is an homage to the classic cars Santana grew up fixing in Los Angeles with his older siblings. Decorative palm trees bookend either side of the truck next to chalkboard menus.
Inside the small trailer kitchen, between daily work checklists, squeeze bottles of mustard sauce and steaming trays of yellow rice and picadillo, the walls and windows are decorated with old license plates and ornamental Cuban flags.
Santana crouches over at the window, chatting casually with customers; Oye Cómo Va grooves softly in the background.
It’s between lunch and dinner crunch times on a mild-for-Fresno April afternoon at the corner of Shaw and Blackstone Avenues, where, since late last year, the 50-year-old chef has settled in the parking lot of the Lifestyle Furniture store, a new regular among a cluster of can’t-miss food trucks.
Santana smiles from under his signature Panama Jack hat, listening to a new customer who doesn’t know what to order.
And what should you order if it’s your first time?
“Cubano,” he says. “Try the Cuban sandwich.”
It’s a heavyweight champion of a sandwich made with shredded pork, slow roasted (for 15 hours!) in Mojo — a classic marinade typically mixed with sour orange juice, garlic, onion and oregano. It’s the most popular item on the menu.
Santana takes a serious and deeply personal kind of pride in his work.
“The culture is so strong and proud of the food and the coffee,” he says, “you want to be excellent with everything you do.”
And, in many ways, each dish that leaves Havana Café’s window is a small tribute to Santana’s mother.
“This all started for me because I missed my mom’s cooking,” he says, drying his hands. “She taught me because she said ‘you’re not going to rely on a woman to feed you.’ But she didn’t keep anything like a recipe book.”
It took him about a full year of experimenting to recreate his mother’s arroz con pollo, a classic chicken and rice dish cooked in a sofrito — a mix of diced onion, bell peppers and garlic, typically seasoned with cumin and oregano. It was a long process of trial and error until one day an excited Santana rushed to his older sister’s house with a breakthrough.
“Her eyes lit up and she was like ‘yeah, you got it!’”
Arroz con pollo is now one of the truck’s most popular dishes. Santana wishes his mother could see how much Fresno loves her food.
Another customer approaches. Santana recognizes her. She’s a semi-regular and today she brought some friends from work. She asks after Santana’s family. They order cortaditos — steamed milk and espresso “pulled right so it’s not bitter.” As the friends move away with their coffees, one of them takes a quick glance back at the trailer.
“It’s cool how much customers comment on the food and ask about my family,” Santana says. “I like that. Getting to know the customers by name, and them getting to know me a little.”
Santana likes to talk about his family, he’s proud of his roots. His father fled Cuba in 1959 to avoid religious persecution under Fidel Castro. Before finally landing safely on American soil, he and four friends were shipwrecked and trapped on a rock —- not a small island — an ocean rock that they clung to for days before they were rescued by a passing fishing boat.
“I remember him talking about the sharks that circled around them. He said they would swim like upside down sometimes — he thought maybe so (the sharks) could see him better — but I remember he said their white bellies reminded him of refrigerators,” Santana recalls. “He would tell me that story when I was a kid and I remember I used to get goosebumps from the story.”
Whenever Santana feels tired after a string of regular 18-hour work days, he remembers those stories and the sacrifices his parents made and the risks they took for their children.
“I think about that and I try not to complain.”
And those long days are starting to pay off for the former Marine and first-responder-turned-chef. Santana first opened his truck in 2022 after living and working in Fresno for almost 20 years. He followed family members to the central San Joaquin Valley after he left the Marines around the turn of the century.
As Havana Café enters its fourth year, Santana’s confidence in his business is growing.
“Word of mouth is our best asset. Social media is great, but word of mouth is everything,” he says. “Little by little, we’ve built up a following.”
Another customer pulls up to the window. He’s had Cubanos before, in Cuba and Miami, too, so, he “knows what it’s supposed to taste like.”
Santana grins, excited for another chance to impress.
“Let us know how we do,” he says, handing the man a card with Havana Café’s social media accounts.
If it’s not your first go-around with Cuban food or maybe you want to signal that you’re just excellent at ordering lunch, try the Cuban Sloppy Joe, a sandwich made with picadillo — ground beef typically slow-simmered with tomatoes, onions, peppers and olives.
“The picadillo is one of our hidden gems,” he says. “Traditionally, it’s served over white rice and beans. It’s one of our popular bowls, too, But then we took it and, because I like to make everything into a sandwich, we turned it into what we call the Cuban Sloppy Joe — and it’s a big hit now.”
Another customer approaches. He’s heard good things about Havana Café, but has never tried Cuban food before. Sometimes enlightenment comes later in life.
Santana adjusts his hat and grins.
“I’m about to change your life, brother.”
