In the ’90s, when I was new to Atlanta, I found my way to the Atlanta Cuban Club in Doraville. On Saturday nights, it was a place to eat, dance, and listen to stories of life in Cuba before the Castro Revolution. The scene felt straight out of Miami, with a touch of Southern charm. But, about five years ago, the club closed its doors.
“I miss having a place that feels like ours,” my friend Karina Reoyo, a fellow Cuban American from Miami, tells me. “There’s nothing like that here anymore.”
Like me, Reoyo grew up in the Kendall neighborhood of Miami, where our Cuban roots showed in everything—from weekday meals to our parents’ stories about the island. She moved to metro Atlanta seven years ago, and I moved back in 2024, after first living here as a graduate student at Mercer University in DeKalb County. Now, without the Cuban Club to guide us, we’ve kept our roots alive the way we know best: through food…