When I stopped to pick up a pound of freshly roasted coffee at La Prima Espresso's roastery in the Strip District, I heard a customer say, "I'll take a pound of Ray's." Not a bag of coffee beans from Sumatra, Kenya or Brazil, nor whether organic or not. Just Ray's. I must have looked befuddled as well as interested. A grinning, energetic man bounded from the sacks of coffee beans over to the counter, arm extended to shake hands.

"I'm Ray and I'm Cuban," said Reynaldo De La Rosa, production manager for the coffee roaster. "Ray's is my special blend. It's as close to Cuban coffee as I can get. Want to try some?"

Cuban? I love that coffee. I love that food. "Do you know where to get good Cuban food in Pittsburgh?" I asked.

Ray nearly overflows with enthusiasm. Yes, he himself cooks. He is a caterer, too.

As such, he will step into the limelight this weekend by making all of the Cuban food for the Latin American & Caribbean Festival at the University of Pittsburgh.

Back at La Prima, he called to a woman sitting nearby, then introduced her as his mother, Veronica, who helps out at the roastery.

She's small and shy and speaks little English, but when the talk turns to food, she smiles and becomes animated, too. Before I could even buy the coffee, I was invited to dinner at their Beechview home. Both of them will cook.

I figured I might need some show-and-tell to facilitate conversation. So as back up, I brought "Eating Cuban" by Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs. The cookbook features authentic recipes from the streets of Havana with photographs of locales as well as the dishes. When Veronica recognized her home sites, she pointed and talked to her son. Ray said, "She knows that place," or "she makes that dish. I do, too." While we turned the pages, we sipped Beer Mary's (iced beer, V-8 and lime) and ate just-fried chicken empanadas the size of folded saucers.

The name Cuba derives from the word cahubaba, from the first Ciboney settlers. It means "Mother Earth." Cuban food is not fancy. It is a simple and hearty peasant cuisine that owes its creative mix to the melting pot of its storied (some good, some harsh) history. The ingredients and dishes each come with a back story. Plantains, black beans and rice, okra, yuca, squash, meats and stews and spices were contributed by the foodways of native islanders, Spanish invaders, African slaves, Chinese laborers and Cuba's neighbors in the Caribbean. Some dishes that have become familiar to Americans are Cuban black bean soup, empanadas (turnovers with spicy fillings), tostones (twice-fried green plantain chips), Cuban sandwiches, Moros y Christianos (black beans and rice) and flan (Cuban caramel custard).

Ray's kitchen is smaller than tiny. How is it possible to cater food for private parties of 50 or more? There is barely enough counter space to hold the microwave oven with a toaster oven on top. There is no dishwasher. This day, the stove burners were covered with pots of fragrant food. "We always have frijoles negros [black beans]" said Ray, lifting a lid. They are a cornerstone of Cuban cooking. Beans are usually served with rice, but they can be served as an entree. When pureed, they become black bean soup. The beans are flavored with a Cuban pepper grown in Ray's small garden out back. He started the plant from seed from a pocketful he brought from Tampa last year. Fresh tomato salad with onions came from the little garden, too.

Chunks of roast pork, redolent of garlic, were in another pot. "We must have garlic and oregano," Ray said. "Our food is spicy, but not hot. We like flavor from our chilies, not mouth-burning heat. We serve white rice almost every day. We sometimes color our rice with Bijol," or annatto, a yellow food coloring.

There was so much food and it looked so good, I called my husband, Bob: "Come on over. There's a party going on." Besides, he speaks Spanish.

As we ate and laughed, Ray told of other food he loves to cook. "When I make my chicken and rice or Cuban paella, I never use broth or water. I use beer. It's my secret ingredient. Sometimes I make fritas, Cuban-style hamburgers. Back home, when we tasted American-style burgers, we thought they were bland. So we 'adjusted' the recipe and made them smaller, about three bites." Ray's burgers combine a half pound bulk sausage with a half pound ground pork and seasonings -- Cuban peppers, garlic, cumin and salt. After a good fry, the patties are placed in a soft bun with thin, crisp shoestring potatoes.

Then Veronica brought out dessert, a golden flan surrounded by a moat of bronze caramel syrup. "Everybody makes flan the same," said Ray. "Eggs, sugar, cream and caramel syrup. My flan de calabaza is different." Ray cooks and drains spaghetti squash, adds three types of milk (condensed, whole and evaporated), eggs, flavorings and cream cheese. The custardy-cheesecakey, creme brulee-ish flan is impossibly smooth and velvety. It's the perfect foil to Ray's coffee.

And then I asked a simple question: Ray, where did you learn to cook, and what brought you to America?

"You sure you want to hear the answer?" joked Ray. "It's a long story." Then we settled back into our chairs. Veronica, who came to the States in 2000 and is now 79 and a citizen, had a faint smile on her face. This proud mother listened with us as Ray told his story, one that she must have heard a hundred times.

Boatlift

Ray, now 49, came to the States in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift, a mass movement of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and Oct. 31. More than 125,000 Cubans came to Southern Florida.

News reports told it this way: Because of growing dissent, housing and job shortages as well as a plummeting economy, Cuban Premier Fidel Castro withdrew his guards from the Peruvian embassy in Havana on April 4. Less than 48 hours after the guards were removed, throngs of Cubans crowded into the gardens at the embassy, requesting asylum. Long story short, Castro declared the port of Mariel "open," and permitted any person who wanted to leave Cuba free access to depart.

Ray, who was working as a nurse in a Havana hospital, gives his own personal version of those events, which he'd heard started when a group of Cubans slipped past the guards at the embassy.

"Hundreds of small craft departed Miami and sailed to Mariel to pick up relatives and were required to take others, too. They'd pick up 20 people and head back. I was one of those people.

"To get a ride, you went to the police station, had your picture taken and signed some papers. In a few days, the police came to your house with a passport. We got off a bus at the port and right onto a boat -- a shrimp boat -- with 60 or 100 people. The water was rough and terrible and many boats didn't make it. After we landed in the States, I was sent to the Indiantown Gap refugee camp, where I spent three months. I was 22 years old, did not speak English and had no job."

Back home in Havana, Ray's frantic father contacted a friend in the States and asked her to find his son. She did, finally, and took him to New York City. "She was like a mother," said Ray. "I wanted to finish medical school, but that was out because I had to get a job to send money back to Havana to support the family. Since my mother taught me to cook when I was young, I knew the basics." He got a job in a kitchen and worked his way up. After 14 years, some of them in Albany, he followed a chef to Easton, in Eastern Pennsylvania, where he was a sous chef for 12 years.

"Ken Myer, who was married to a Cuban, worked in that kitchen," Ray said. "He decided to open a restaurant in Pittsburgh. He needed a Cuban cook, and I needed a change." For three years, Ray cooked at Kenny B's on Sixth Street. When that eatery closed, Ray, burned out on the restaurant business, joined La Prima.

And yes, in answer to the question asked that day at the La Prima coffee roastery, there is good Cuban food in Pittsburgh.

Especially at Ray's house.