‘There is only one Versailles’
Famous Cuban eatery celebrates 50 years in Miami
MIAMI — Versailles is a place to see and be seen.
At its little window known asa ventanita, Miamians have been trying for 50 years to fix the world as they enjoy one of their favorite activities: sipping Cuban coffee.
As they enter the restaurant, the first thing that visitors do is look around the tables for friends. And the scan never fails: There’s always someone with whom to chat.
Even the mirrors in the main hall — the work of Juan PérezCruz, a decorator with a passion for French styles and uncle of the singer Pitbull — conspire to make the clients multiply.
Throughout the 50 years of existence that it marks this year, Versailles and the idea of crowds have been synonymous in a city where people spend a lot of time in their cars and head to the Cuban restaurant on Calle Ocho when they want to celebrate — or protest — something.
If the Heat or the Marlins win, the pots and pans ring out at Versailles to put music to the celebration. The chants and posters of “Freedom!” come out when Cuba is experiencing one of its many crises, like on July 11 when Miami Cubans camped out for more than a week at Versailles to show their support of Cubans on the island, who hit the streets for the biggest protests in the past 60 years.
That’s why it’s hard to imagine that Versailles was empty and silent at some point.
But that’s what happened in March 2020, when MiamiDade County ordered all restaurants to close because of the pandemic. The Valls family, owners of Versailles, made a deal with Sedano’s to hire 400
employees of the restaurant and its La Carreta branch to work in the supermarkets, which were doing good business at the time because almost everything else was closed.
“It was so sad to see Versailles closed. We all cried, even the employees, [and] we all hugged,” recalled Nicole Valls, vice president of operations of the Valls Group. With sisters Luly and Desirée, they are the third generation to operate the restaurant, founded by grandfather Felipe Valls in 1971.
“We were only doing take-out, and it was so strange when I went in,” Nicole said.
The restaurant has not fully recovered because of a shortage of employees and has been
forced to trim its closing hours to midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
It’s difficult to imagine Versailles without those latenight hours that made it a favorite of several generations of Miamians who left the theaters or the clubs in search of croquetas or yucca fritters with cilantro mojo. In the middle of an early morning bite, you could almost hear the loud laughter of Olga Guillot.
The singer, a native of Santiago de Cuba like Felipe Valls Sr., was a fixture at those early mornings at the Versailles, as was Israel López “Cachao,” who sometimes stopped by after playing at clubs around the city, including the Copacabana, across the street from Versailles and also a Valls
property.
Versailles is a witness to a time when Miami was much smaller, much less Cuban and barely Latino.
“Miami was a quiet town. There was almost no traffic,” Felipe Valls Jr. said about the city where his father decided to open a restaurant on Calle Ocho and 35th Avenue, beyond the center of the city’s life between downtown and 12th Avenue.
Many warned Felipe Valls Sr. that it was crazy to go so far west, but by then the businessman was moving fast. After coming to Miami in 1960, he sold used restaurant equipment, imported espresso coffee machines and invented the ventanita so cafeterias could continue to sell coffee and pastries to street clients before the arrival of air conditioning. He also sold his restaurant Badia’s in Little Havana, where El Pub now sits.
Today the Valls Group has 2,000 employees and owns the nine La Carretas in South Florida, MesaMar in Coral Gables, Casa Cuba in South Miami and Casa Juancho, a longtime Spanish restaurant in Little Havana.
They also own packing and distributing plants as well as a coffee roaster for their own brand, La Carreta, which they offer in their restaurants and sell to other cafeterias around Miami. Versailles’ croquetas are also sold at Whole Foods.
“There is only one Versailles, and it would lose its magic if there was more than one,” Nicole Valls said about the decision not to open other Versailles restaurants in Miami. There are a few outposts at Miami International Airport.
At the request of many clients who want the classic Versailles, there are no plans to modernize the decor — “a little crazy,” as Luly Valls puts it, because it mixes the mirrors, “fancy” chandeliers and the typical uniforms of waiters and waitresses.
But that’s as far as they want to remain frozen in time because Versailles, which sells more than 7,000 Cuban sandwiches every month at its Calle Ocho location, now ships them out through the popular web page www.goldbelly.com.
Versailles has been a magnet for politicians who have long turned up there to seek the Cuban vote and offer their support to Cubans. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Sen. John McCain and more recently House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have sipped coffee or attended dinners or meetings at the restaurant.
“It’s been something we cannot control,” said Felipe Valls, who sometimes gets to his office at Versailles and finds 1,000 people at a demonstration in front of the restaurant.