Thursday, March 14, 2013

As close to Cuba as you can get; A trip to Cuban Crafters in Hialeah, FL.

I’m all over the Cuban Crafters cigar company right now having made the pilgrimage to their headquarters in the Hialeah area of Miami this week.  Walking into this store is like taking a trip back in time to when good friends got together over a cigar and just shared a real good time together, for no particular reason except the comradery.



The building is huge, the cigars are everywhere, the walk-in humidor is bigger than most other entire smoke shops.  When you first walk in there is a giant counter/cashier area where a few of the lovely ladies that work there are happily attending customers.


To the left is a large area where master cigar rollers are throwing down!  Leaf after leaf, these craftsmen delicately turn, mold, cut and press this precious cargo into some of the best local smokes in town.  Across from the center counter is the largest walk in humidor I’ve ever been in, with just rows and rows of cigars from floor to ceiling.
To the right of the humidor is, get this, a barber shop!  Where else can you enjoy a premium cigar and get your haircut at the same time?  Just to the right of that is a Cuban coffee counter, where all the espresso coffee you want is FREE!  In front of that is a collection of humidors like you’ve never seen before, every size, color and shape you can imagine.


Walk into the next room and you’ll find a dozen or so rocking chairs, just waiting to gently rock your worries away as you puff on a juicy maduro!  In the same room there are racks of Cuban Guavera shirts, in all colors and sizes, more humidors as well as beautiful artwork depicting scenes from Cuba.
But wait, there’s more! 



The next room is decorated to look like your walking down a street in Old Havana.  Complete with the ‘Bodega Del Medio’ sign from a famous store in Cuba, this section has four domino tables, and at 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon, you had to wait to get a seat to play!


This is some hard-core old school, double nine Cuban domino so you better bring your A game.  In this room there are also beautiful laminate domino tables for sale with authentic artwork mostly based on Cuban landmarks and culture.


The cigar I tried was a J.L. Salazar “Hermanos” maduro.  Man oh man, just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, this cigar seriously blew me away.  From start to finish, it was smooth, strong enough for my tastes and delicious down to the nub!  A must definite buy by the bundle!


To say I felt like a kid in a candy store would be an understatement.  Top it all off with some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and it’s not an exaggeration when I say I wanted to move in.  Thanks to Don Kiki for making me feel right at home, this place really embellishes all that is good about the cigar industry and I can only hope that it remains that way for generations to come!

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