Andy Huse despairs at the thought, and the taste, of a poorly executed Cuban sandwich. Could anything be more depressing than a lackluster Cuban? Well, yes, but maybe not to Huse, who, if not a gourmet, is at least a lover of his city's famously sturdy sandwich prepared in the proper manner.

"It's getting hard to find an authentic Cuban,'' he grouses. "Many restaurants put lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise on them. Some even put onions. What they serve are not Cuban sandwiches. They're subs.''

It's a depressing situation all right, a situation he has pondered for a while. He has almost finished writing a book called Tampa's Delicious History: Restaurants and Culture in the Twentieth Century and recently lectured on "Feast and Famine in Ybor City: 1885-1930" at the Southern Foodways Alliance at Oxford, Miss. Next fall he expects to teach a new history class on Florida gastronomy at the University of South Florida, where he works as assistant librarian.

Hungry students who expect to earn A's should avoid buying convenience-store Cubans. They should look for a sandwich assembled with the proper pork, the proper ham, the proper salami. For heaven's sake, students, get your salami right!

Huse, on the hunt for the perfect Cuban sandwich, looks like a gourmet. In other words, he watches his calories, his cholesterol and tries to eat more whole grains and fruit.

He is 33, born in Chicago, where folks value good pizza and celery salt on their hot dogs. When he was 6, his family moved to Clearwater.

He ate his first Cuban sandwich at the Silver Ring Cafe in Ybor City in 1992. He was about 20, a poverty-stricken student looking for something tasty but cheap.

The Silver Ring sold authentic Cubans, that is, sandwiches performed on elongated Cuban bread dressed with mustard, sour pickles, Swiss cheese, mojo pork, sweet ham and Genoa salami, and then mashed in an electric press that melted the salami fat over the other ingredients.

"The Silver Ring was the benchmark,'' he says fondly of the original, which closed in 1996.

Foot heavy on the accelerator, he speeds north along the Suncoast Parkway past ranches and cattle, past pines and cypress trees. When the road ends, he turns west toward the Gulf, then careens north on U.S. 19 past depressing gas stations and fast food emporiums.

He can almost smell it now.

Almost there. Turn west on Central Street. After a few miles, hang a right on W Yulee.

Finally, he slides into the parking lot of the Museum Cafe and pronounces himself a happy man.

Hail Homosassa, the Cuban sandwich capital of Florida!

The owner of the cafe is not Cuban, Italian or Spanish. He is a fourth-generation, 53-year-old African-American named Jim Anderson. "It dawned on me that nobody was making the Cuban sandwiches I remembered from my youth, man. So that is what we tried to re-create when we opened five years ago.''

His wife, Jane, drives to Tampa every day for the ingredients. The Andersons buy only sugar-cured baked ham and their salami is always Genoa salami. They are especially proud of their pork. They marinate it in garlic and the juice from sour oranges.

"They press the sandwiches perfectly here," Huse proclaims

Biting into his Cuban, he hears a satisfying crunch.

Crunch. Swallow. Crunch.

"Sometimes people will say, 'What's the big deal about a Cuban sandwich?' Well, they haven't really had one. They've eaten a ham sandwich. This is a Cuban sandwich.''