Girl on the Run

Sarah Hammett is a trained chef and a mother of two with one on the way, but she’s best known these days for piloting a massive truck gilded with images of palm trees and bananas. “It definitely earns me some stares,” says Hammett, operator of the Cuban Connection, which joined the burgeoning mobile eatery scene on September 11. It’s owned by Alex Dalmau, a Baton Rougean of Cuban descent who grew up eating the distinct cuisine at home.

“We did Cuban because [Alex] thought a food truck would be a great way to see if it would work well in the community,” says Hammett. “With it being a truck, we do a lot of Cuban pressed sandwiches.”

The “Andy Garcia” melds ham, Swiss cheese, roast pork, mustard and pickles and is a hit among Cuban Americans searching for the familiar, says Hammett. Meanwhile local Louisianans favor the Cuban Connection for its terrain of pulled pork, ham, cheese, fresh cilantro, sweet caramelized onions and spiked aioli.

Hammett is a Baton Rouge native who was drawn to cooking at an early age, but she had no plans to become a chef, instead pursuing an education degree at LSU. She worked her way through college waiting tables at the Magnolia Café on Sherwood Forest Boulevard, and serendipitously ended up cooking there when a line cook failed to show up. Hammett stepped in and never looked back. She passed on teaching and completed a culinary arts degree at the Texas Culinary Academy, an affiliate of Le Cordon Bleu, and worked in restaurants before pausing recently to start family.

Now Hammett plies her trade in a funky, generator-powered mobile eatery, creating not just sandwiches, but elemental Cuban eats like black beans, fried plantains, and pastries (pastelitos) with guava or beef. Cuban food isn’t known for its hefty seasoning, so Hammett has made adjustments for expectant palates hereabouts.

“At first, cooking on a food truck was hard to get used to,” says Hammett, who also plots the Cuban Connection’s routes and updates social media. “Now I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.”