For News or to Schmooze: Versailles

When Fidel Castro fainted this summer during a speech, there was really only one place for TV crews to come to take the instant pulse of the Cuban American community: a Little Havana restaurant where the gossip and news are as hot as the high-octane coffee.

Thirty years ago, a Cuban immigrant opened a small eatery called Versailles, for the French royal pleasure palace. Since then, the establishment on Southwest 8th Street has expanded four times. Today, it can serve 370 at a time, not including the sidewalk counter where passersby can gulp a quick cafe con leche, or a Cuban espresso.

Cuban Americans agree that, if their community has a heart, this restaurant with the glittering chandeliers and etched mirrors on the walls is it.

“Versailles is like a magnet where people get together to see their friends; catch up with the news and the gossip of the city,” said Albert A. Rincon, 49, a fire-rescue worker who visits at least twice a week for lunch and coffee.

“It’s the quintessential landmark in the Cuban community,” added James Boyette, 27, whose mother is Cuban. He came for lunch one day this month with his cousin, an insurance adjuster who lives in Atlanta and was homesick for real Cuban fare. “I’m taking goodies back with me: stuffed potatoes and guayaba pastries,” 34-year-old Elizabeth Diaz Graham said.

Candidates on a quest for the Cuban American vote, singers, movie stars and sports heroes alike have flocked to Versailles for a meal and a schmooze session. Bill Clinton gave a buffet here to thank Cuban Americans who broke ranks with the community’s traditional pro-Republican politics to vote for him. Ronald Reagan had coffee. The Spice Girls, Ricky Martin, Monica S. Lewinsky and chef Emeril also are on the list of famous patrons.

The last VIP from Washington to land here was Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who came in June during his first trip to Miami. He ordered a Cuban sampler plate of ham croquettes, roast pork, ground beef, yucca, sweet plantains, rice and beans.

Did he leave a tip? “Yes,” joked Felipe Valls Jr., the founder’s son, who now runs the place. “The tip was: Vote Republican.”

Versailles claims to be the oldest established Cuban restaurant in this city, which is one reason for its unparalleled status. To celebrate its three decades of existence, prices were rolled back one night this summer to 1971 levels. Black bean soup cost 70 cents, a Cuban sandwich was $1.45, a pounded skirt steak with trimmings went for $3.25. About 1,500 hungry people lined up for the event.

In a way, Versailles is a true mirror of the Cuban experience in Miami, which began in wretched flight and has culminated in economic and political achievement. In Cuba, the senior Valls had owned a Texaco gas station, a small nightclub and the contract to supply bottles to a brewery. When the 27-year-old landed on these shores in 1960, he and many other refugees expected that Castro’s regime would fall quickly and that they’d be going home soon.

By 1971, it was obvious that Castro, propped up with massive aid from the Soviets, had plenty of staying power. The senior Valls opened Versailles, which originally seated 70 people. “He didn’t know how long it would be here, or we would be here,” his son noted. Though the father died in 1992, the family remains a major power on the Miami restaurant scene, owning a dozen restaurants as well as the Versailles bakery.

The growth of the Cuban community--and of Miami as a whole--was key to the family’s good fortune. When the senior Valls started Versailles, a lot of people told him he had chosen a location too far west on 8th Street (or Calle Ocho, as it generally is known). But Miami expanded around the restaurant and kept heading west.

“We’re full for lunch every day,” the younger Valls said. “This is where politicians come for lunch, where famous people drop by. You come here and you know you’re always going to meet someone you know.”

The clientele are hardly all movers and shakers. One table is faithfully set aside for a group of a dozen friends--insurance agents, accountants and the like--who have been eating lunch at Versailles for a quarter of a century. The mix of customers and generations is one reason that when reporters need a “man on the street” reaction from Cuban Americans, they head for Versailles.

On one typical day last week, a camera crew from a Spanish-language cable TV network was at the street-side coffee counter quizzing people about what they thought of a recent spate of wet weather. In the main dining room sat a correspondent and photographer from Associated Press, working on a story about the census. At a table in the back, Joe Garcia, the executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful political lobbying group, was having lunch with yet another journalist.

“Versailles is the boom box of Cuban exile Miami, the landmark institution where a cup of coffee comes with the classic sound bite,” Liz Balmaseda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote recently.

Since its founding, Versailles has served more than 10 million cups of coffee and spawned several imitators. (The restaurants with the same name in Los Angeles, the younger Valls says, have no ties to his father’s creation but were started before the name was registered as a trademark.)

Versailles is now “as large as it’s going to get,” the son says, but the bakery will be connected to the restaurant and an indoor cafe will be opened in that space.

And when Castro finally passes from the scene? “In Cuba, maybe there will be a Versailles,” Valls Jr. says. “There will be one in Havana, and another in Santiago de Cuba, where we are from.”