These words from the Rum Cake Lady’s postcard speak of the strong Cuban connections alive and flavorful in northern Georgia.
Photo Above: Nani’s was the first Cuban restaurant to open in Blairsville, Georgia. Among the specialties are ropa vieja, black beans and yellow rice.
Photos Courtesy of Fred & Jill Sauceman.
Advertisements for realty companies, electricians, car dealers and well drillers border the tables at Dan’s Grill in Blairsville, Georgia.
In the middle of each table is a large map. It doesn’t depict the northern Georgia mountains or the Appalachian Trail. Instead, it’s a map of Cuba.
Dan’s Grill has specialized in the cuisine of the island nation since 2010, serving dishes like tostones—green plantains cooked, pressed into patties, fried and accompanied by a mojo sauce of citrus and garlic. Black beans, seasoned with cumin, simmer on the stove every day. Owner Dan Hernandez uses his Cuban grandmother’s recipe for ropa vieja, or “old clothes,” a dish of shredded beef, peppers and onions in a brightly flavored tomato sauce.
Dan’s Grill is not alone in northern Georgia when it comes to Caribbean flavors. Blairsville is currently home to just over 600 people. In all of Union County, there are about 25,000. Yet in Blairsville, there are three different family-owned Cuban restaurants. Neighboring Blue Ridge and McCaysville each have one as well.
When we visited Nani’s in Blairsville, Natasha Arrazcaeta was busy canning garbanzo beans for one of the restaurant’s soups. Her father Ray and her mother Marife opened the first Cuban restaurant in northern Georgia in 2007.
Ray, a native of Cuba, has been around the restaurant business all his life. His father was a waiter at the famed Columbia in the Ybor City section of Tampa for almost 30 years.
Marife, who has been cooking since she was 12, is the daughter of a Spanish father and a Puerto Rican mother. Whether it’s black beans or her ropa vieja, she tells us that virtually all her cooking begins with a sofrito, a blend of onions, garlic, and peppers, cooked in olive oil. In a typical week, Marife and her staff will use about 14 liters of sofrito.
“You cook in layers,” Marife tells us. “And you cook tasting. You don’t measure.”
When she first moved from Puerto Rico to Florida, she missed the mountains. One July 4 weekend, the family traveled to northern Georgia, and Marife was captivated.
“It looks just like where I grew up,” she says. “When we opened the restaurant, the people here took us right in. I’m committed to this community.”
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Ray and Marife decided not to close. Every Monday, they fed anyone who needed a plate of food. They even cooked food that people brought in to the restaurant. They delivered to doctors’ offices, emergency rooms and fire departments.
“If you find a Puerto Rican, you’re always going to find them in the kitchen, with the music up and talking to everybody while we cook. That’s the heart of the family right there,” she told us.
One of northern Georgia’s most beloved citizens is Elizabeth Correa, known as The Rum Cake Lady. She operates counter-service cafés in Blue Ridge and in McCaysville, serving house-made empanadas, Cuban-style tamales, Cuban sandwiches, stuffed potatoes, black beans and rice and more, while selling her popular rum cakes.
A native of the Cuban city of Camagüey, Correa started selling rum cakes, based on her mother Belkis Celestrin’s recipe, at northern Georgia farmers markets. Correa and her family had moved to Blue Ridge in 2012 in search of a quieter life compared to the big city of Miami. She opened her first café in 2015. That building is now devoted to cake baking. The Rum Cake Lady Cuban Café opened in 2017 in Blue Ridge, and the McCaysville location followed two years later, its back wall corresponding to the Georgia-Tennessee state line.
“Back in Cuba, everybody made rum cakes because rum and sugar were so abundant,” says Correa.
Cuba is never far from her mind and heart. Her father, Gustavo Celestrin, had operated a restaurant and cafeteria there, called La Siempre Viva (“always alive”). After Fidel Castro took over the country, the Communist regime confiscated all his property, and he was taken prisoner for attempting to rebel. Eventually, he made it to the U.S. after having to spend a year in Spain. Disliking the cold weather of New Jersey, he and the family moved to Puerto Rico. After his death in a car accident, Belkis, then retired from her job as a teacher, decided to move the family to Miami. Her hobby, making rum cakes, turned into a business, as her daughter’s eventually would.
“The last year she was alive, she made 300 rum cakes that December,” remembers Correa.
The recipe for The Rum Cake Lady Café’s Golden Rum Cake, upon which Correa first built her business, is a direct inheritance from her mother, with its flavors of vanilla and butter and the addition of almonds. Next she added a chocolate rum cake, with almonds or salty caramel, as she says, “depending on how I feel.
“Customers wanted even more flavors, so we added the Limoncello, a lemon rum cake with an Italian limoncello liqueur glaze,” says Correa, who adds that because of Georgia liquor laws, she must travel to another county to purchase her rum and limoncello.
In 2021, Elizabeth Correa’s husband David left his corporate job to handle the catering and maintenance sides of the business, with help from their sons David Jr. and Christopher.
Elizabeth and David were high school sweethearts in Puerto Rico, and she has known Lissy Herrera even longer, back to her days in Cuba. Lissy found northern Georgia just as enchanting as her friend did. She is now the proprietor of Lala’s Kitchen in the Mountains in Blairsville, home of the best Cuban flan we’ve ever found, flavored with coconut.
Because of the hard-working families we met, fried plantains and ham croquettes have found a permanent home in the mountains of northern Georgia.
Fred and Jill Sauceman study and celebrate the foodways of Appalachia and beyond from their home base in Johnson City, Tennessee.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2023 issue.
