Southwest Miami-Dade Business Celebrating Tradition, Innovation of Cuban Food – NBC 6 South Florida

The croqueta is a Cuban food staple in South Florida. Golden brown and delicious, croquetas are a very popular snack in south Florida and can be made in a ton of flavors. Now, one business is pushing the limits of what that means.

“Typically you go to any bakery and you have ham, chicken or cheese,” said Liz Hernandez, general manager at Dos Croquetas. “We wanted to bring our roots and kind of what makes abuelitas favorite dish into a croqueta, and just thinking of how can we make something so normal in the city, something different.”

Dos Croquetas is a family run business focusing on tradition, but making room for new ones. Those traditions are being celebrated during Hispanic Heritage Month.

“It’s important to see and be able to show back, give this glimpse into our parents and to the generations and to show the generations that are coming,” she said. “We’re basically the trailblazers for the next generation of Hispanics.”

The innovation doesn’t come without some pushback from people who prefer something more traditional.

“My favorite thing, specially from our older generation, our ancestors, the fact that they’ll be like ‘that’s not a croqueta, how can you put guava cinnamon toast crunch into a croqueta’ and I’m like try it,” she said.

The restaurant is serving up some special dishes to celebrate. You can get the 305 Daddy sandwich, a delicious combination of guava, fried cheese, bacon, their 3-0-5 croqueta, coleslaw and potato sticks.

If you’re craving something sweet, try their tres leches milkshake. It even has little pieces of cake in it.

Of course, we can’t forget a croqueta for this celebration. A goat cheese, bacon, and plantain croqueta is on the menu this month.

“It’s a true to the heart, comfort food. It just makes people happy,” she said.