In the year and a half since Erica Benavides and Ray Rodriguez opened their restaurant on a mostly boarded-up stretch of West Southcross Boulevard, they’ve faced a major learning curve and skepticism from peers.
Then Rodriguez was diagnosed with bladder cancer last year.
But because Cuba 1918 represents more than a business venture to the first-time restaurateurs, they’re determined to make it work — and are deploying new resources to help other area businesses feed off their success.
Located in the Quintana neighborhood near Port San Antonio, Cuba 1918 opened in October 2022 with a menu of recipes Rodriguez recalls his Cuban godmother making during his childhood — in a 1918 building owned by Benavides’ aunt, a lifelong mentor.
The restaurant serves lunch and dinner, and breakfast items all day, and features live jazz on Friday evenings.
On a recent weekday afternoon, a family ate together in the spacious dining room, a pinkish hue warming its aged concrete walls, with enticing aromas coming from the kitchen and, in the back, a stage and dance floor ready for a Latin jazz set later that evening.
Before Cuba 1918, the block was quiet, its abandoned storefronts all that were left of a “Main Street” that had bustled with activity decades before Kelly Air Force Base was shuttered.
The vision that brought Cuba 1918 to life began with music. Rodriguez, a disabled veteran, began spending more time playing guitar and piano, and practicing vocals, in the unused building as a way to fight off post-traumatic stress disorder. Local teenager Angel Galvan followed the sound and asked if he could take music lessons.
But with no money to pay the teacher, Rodriguez suggested Galvan pick up a broom and earn his way.
The jam sessions with Galvan and other musicians led to the couple forming a business that hired musicians for special events. “I was surrounded by Cuban musicians and some of them also had PhDs in math or they were chefs,” Benavides. “But it was just a beautiful tapestry of a different type of Latino culture.”
The idea took off until 2020, when the pandemic forced them to do something different. But they wouldn’t stray far from that inspiration, opening a restaurant that showcased Latin foods, music and culture and also the culinary experience Galvan gained in high school.
The family hopes their restaurant can be the anchor that brings it back to life. But with few other restaurants or shops open along that stretch of West Southcross, they can’t depend on foot traffic.
“If we get people, it’s because we invited them or we brought them through whatever marketing or whatever things we’ve done,” Benavides said.
Last year, she was one of 20 community leaders accepted into a program being led by the City of San Antonio’s economic development department that will support her efforts to lead redevelopment of the Southcross/Quintana corridor. Almost 50 people applied for the first training cohort.
The City is partnering in the program with the nonprofit Main Street America, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation that is focused on building stronger communities through preservation-based economic development.
“The City of San Antonio has experienced tremendous growth over the past decade, and we expect this trend to continue,” said Brenda Hicks-Sorensen, the city’s economic development director. “This pilot program with Main Street America will provide selected commercial corridors with the tools needed to cultivate stronger economies in their business corridors and surrounding neighborhoods.”
In addition to training, participants in the corridor program pilot are eligible for a grant up to $10,000 for their projects or campaigns.
“We’re doing a combination of leadership [training] as well as [teaching] the right strategies to directly introduce them to concepts in placemaking, in small business support and government services, and introducing them to key stakeholders,” said Dionne Baux, vice president of field services for neighborhood commercial corridors at Main Street America.
For a list of the corridors and leaders selected for the program, click here.
Benavides hopes to use the leadership training and a microgrant to launch a campaign she calls “Revive Quintana.”
“We’re taking little steps, but what we really need is more investment in communities like this,” she said.
As a part of that campaign, she hopes to put on a street-based event this summer with vendors showing how the vacant buildings along Southcross could be activated, to “reimagine the neighborhood,” she said.
“What would it look like if there was a flower shop? What would it look like if there was a pizza parlor?” she asked.
Next door to Cuba 1918, Benavides also envisions a bodega selling fresh foods and other items for the surrounding neighborhood and that supports the restaurant. She wants to open the bodega in conjunction with the street festival.
“We have to make it work,” she recalled her husband saying about the restaurant when he got his diagnosis.
A year later, they’re still saying it, wanting to make a difference for young people like Galvan, for property owners and residents in the neighborhood and for the aunt she hopes to make proud.
“The success of this restaurant means way more than just bringing in money in here,” said Rodriguez, who still runs the kitchen operations with Galvan as chef.
“To be able to stand back and say we’ve got a restaurant is one thing,” he said. “But to step back and say we built a restaurant that was an anchor for other businesses and kind of starting a snowballing redevelopment thing, that’s another one.”
Correction: This article has been updated to correct Rodriguez’s last name.
