‘ON YOUR FEET’
Gloria Estefan takes her ‘foodie’ abuela on the road
Long before Instagram plate shots, pop-up restaurants and hipster food trucks, there was Consuelo, porksandwich goddess of Northwest Miami. Gloria Estefan called her “Abuela.”
To hear the superstar tell the story, Grandma was a spitfire.
“She was this four-foot-six, little lady. She was an amazing business woman and an amazing cook,” Gloria tells me by phone on a recent afternoon, her voice floating between memories of her maternal grandmother.
When the Broadway musical that tells her life story, “On Your Feet,” officially opened its national tour in Miami’s Arsht Center for the Performing Arts last Friday for a 10-day run, her character was reunited with her late grandmother’s character.
And there’s much to say about Abuela Consuelo, a pivotal figure in Gloria’s life.
“She raised me. She was my hero,” says Gloria about the grandmother that doted on her, cooked her favorite dishes and always worried if she was eating enough.
Grandma was not only an idol, protector and source of inspiration to the singer, she was something quite rad for 1960s Miami: “My grandmother was a foodie.”
We’ve been friends for nearly 25 years, so I know quite a few food-related details about Miami’s music queen. I know she has a hearty appetite. She’s not shy about digging into a mound of arroz con pollo and crispy, twice-fried green plantains.
I know she makes a mean cosmo, and to watch her create her favorite cocktail is like watching a scientist deep in concentration, measuring, swirling, seeking exactitude in shades of orange and pink.
I also know she not only enjoys but can architect a splendid, Spanish-style table (charcuterie board), heaped with salty-sweet contrasts: swirls of cured meats, a range of cheeses, crispy flatbread and figgy jam.
And I know she’s a good cook, having soaked up all kinds of Cuban kitchen skills from watching her grandmother.
But I didn’t know much about Abuela’s culinary accomplishments until a recent conversation. Consuelo Garcia fled Cuba at age 56, landing in Miami without a dime and without knowing a word of English. She and her husband, Leonardo Garcia, rented a house just north of Little Havana. The location of the house proved to be a godsend: It sat across the street from a public park and its bustling baseball field.
“There was a plethora of Cuban men playing Little League baseball with their sons,” says Gloria. “And my grandmother observed there were no concessions in that park.”
Where others might have seen park regulars cheering on their teams, Consuelo saw hungry mouths to feed, bellies that surely grumbled and fritter cravings that needed fixing. She saw an opportunity to do what she loved – cook! – and make American cash doing so.
Grandma Foodie’s love of cooking had its sturdy roots: Her father had served as personal chef for two Cuban presidents. But could she transplant those roots into Miami soil and would they grow?
Consuelo set off to roast pork and assemble a stack of pan con lechon (pulled pork sandwiches), fry up croquetas, empanadas, papa rellenas (stuffed, fried potato balls) and steam pork-studded cornmeal tamales.
“She borrowed a grocery cart and she started selling her food at the park,” Gloria recalls.
Abuela was on to something – on the very first day, she sold out of her confections. Her Cuban street-food enterprise would be a hit, and it would lead to a catering business.
“She built up a business that would sometimes make like $5,000 a weekend,” Gloria says.
As a child, the singer loved the decadent Cuban bites created in her grandmother’s kitchen, but she also was fascinated by the inner workings of the business, the entrepreneurial web that could turn a stack of pork sandwiches into rent money.
“I would go with my grandfather to buy all this stuff – meat from the meat guy, Cawy (sodas) from the Cawy guy,” Gloria recalls. “My grandmother had found all these Cuban exiles who were local food distributors and this is who we bought from.”
Gloria recalls how her grandmother came to be known in her community for her fluffy croquetas and other fritters. And she can still taste Abuela’s signature dishes: enchilado de langosta or de camaron (lobster or shrimp in creole sauce) and rabo encendido (braised oxtail).
“She taught me so many things. How to get rid of the sliminess from okra, how to season tostones by soaking them in salted water. All these tricks. I grew up in the kitchen, watching her,” says Gloria, who would come to open several Cuban-inspired restaurants and write a cookbook with husband Emilio.
Still today, the sight of a papa rellena (stuffed potato ball) summons visions of her grandmother’s hands forming mashed potatoes into smooth orbs for stuffing, breading and frying.
In between those cooking lessons were life lessons. Gloria’s father, a Vietnam veteran, was very ill with a neurological disease. She would become his caregiver while her mother worked as a schoolteacher to support the family. There seemed little time for musical dreams.
But it was in Abuela’s kitchen that an extremely shy girl would learn the confidence to sing in front of strangers. Consuelo would invite some of Miami’s best known crooners of the day, like bolero singer Roberto Ledesma and flamenco singer Tomas de San Julian, to come visit.
“She would make me sing for them. She was like a stage mother,” Gloria recalls. “I would say, ‘Abuela, I’m too shy. I love to sing, but I’m too shy.’ She would say, ‘You have a gift. You have to share that gift or you won’t be happy.’ She would tell me, ‘No matter what you do, an opportunity is going to land in your lap. Don’t make a mistake and let it get away.’”
Don’t worry, Consuelo. Thanks to you and your magical kitchen, the world has heard the honey voice you so loved.