For Matt Elliott, it took him several years to perfect his Cuban sandwich and make it exactly the way he wanted, an authentic and impressive representation of the sandwich he fell in love with while spending time in Florida.

“Everyone has their own recipe. It’s how you make it,” Elliott explains. “ It took two years to find the right bread, which is critical to the sandwich. There was a lot of research that had to be done in order to create the best product I can put out for a reasonable price. It may not be rocket science, but we wanted to assure our customers that we can make a delicious meal that people will love and that mimics the Cuban sandwich style to the best of our ability.”

Matt Elliott behind the counter, helping out a customer. (Photo by Gary Mead)

The evolution of the Cuban sandwich actually started out in 1990 as a burrito. Elliott had an opportunity to stay in California at some friend’s flat. During that time, he went to all of these burrito places. Returning to Indianapolis, he brainstormed the idea.

“I was talking it over with a buddy and asked him if a burrito place would make it here. He said, no. Now look at how many burrito shops we have in the city.”

What Elliott really wanted to do was create a niche, thinking the burrito would fill that. What transpired was that the cuban sandwich became his burrito.

“We looked at other items that other people were doing in Indy,” he said. “We thought the cuban sandwich would be something people would be interested in.”

He also took this idea of the pressed sandwich and incorporated it into different varieties that is offered on the Northside News Cafe menu, be it the Irish Times Reuben, the La Cucina Italiana, or the Forza Pizza Press, among others items like veggie choices, soups, and more. The charm of their sandwiches lie in the elegance of simplicity and efficiency in the process while creating an environment that has remained a staple of the 54th and College Avenue area for over a decade now.

Inside the cafe. (Photo by Gary Mead)

“We always wanted to be a neighborhood joint,” he said. “We have always tried to accommodate different folks with different things from the food to the magazines.”

In the beginning, Northside News Cafe was simply known as Northside News and served as an expansive resource for mainstream and alternative newspapers and magazines. The business was started by three friends, including Elliott. Having a collective restaurant experience that adds up to over 50 years, they originally wanted to create a restaurant, but the idea of a newsstand in the city took the forefront, and they ran with it.

“Kevin and Tim wanted to start a business in the neighborhood,” Elliott said. “We knew a little bit about tobacco, and we knew a little bit about magazines. The idea of a newsstand in the area got a lot of great response. People were excited. The neighborhood was excited.”

Elliott loved the idea of reaching out to the neighborhood as it has always been a natural and organic gesture for him to be proactive in his community, showing up at neighborhood business association meetings or out talking to people and listening to what they have to say. Spending most of his life in this city, you don’t have to ask too many people before someone knows Elliott.

“The Northside is the biggest small town in the United States,” he said. “We have a spiderweb of ties here. Instead of seven degrees of separation, we have three degrees of separation in Indianapolis.”

View from behind the counter. (Photo by Gary Mead)

It’s this connectivity that immediately gave the newsstand a push and pull continuity. If there were requests, he would try to follow up on them. If someone wanted a particular newspaper or magazine, he would look into it.

Even today, if you walk into the cafe, you will not just notice patrons there for a meal, but you will experience neighbors huddled up to the bar, reading their morning paper. You will find friends gathered off to the side enjoying the comforts as if it was their own home. Behind the counter, Elliott’s staff may be in the background but their importance is just as critical as they are always checking in on people and catching up on their daily lives. If you did not know better, you would swear you walked into some small town restaurant where everyone knows everyone else and hospitality reigns. It’s a perfect reaction as the cafe has taken on just as much a vitality as the city it resides in.

Customers belly up to the bar to catch up on life in the city (Photo by Gary Mead).

For the past month, the cafe has undergone various renovations, striping out an entire room filled with shelves of magazines, papers, books, candy, tobacco products, everything you would expect to find at any city newsstand. It gave the appearance that the stand was closing down, when in reality it was only gaining a rebirth.

For Elliott the magazine side was simply a “labor of love” for all who was involved. They held on as long as they could, but as chain bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble reached out to stock a larger collection of magazines and the economy started to take a nosedive, it became more apparent that publishing companies began having issues, inflation began taking place on the overhead price of the magazine, and purchasing a magazine went from being a commodity to a luxury.

The biggest blow was when the distribution company fueling the magazines declared bankruptcy. That was a clear indication for him to make the transition, which made sense as the real estate it takes to house 1600 magazines was keeping the cafe area limited in space.

“When the cafe gets busy, we get really busy,” Elliott said. “We have very limited seating. People would walk by and think the place if full and keep on walking. What it came down to is that we needed more room.”

That extra room will not only fulfill that coffee shop-style vibe, where people can plug up their laptops, connect to the free wifi or enjoy the atmosphere, but it will also create a space where they can offer some live music.

“It was Crazy Al’s way back before John Hiatt played there,” he continued. “It’s the perfect environment for musicians to perform an intimate, more relaxed show.”

As the clutter is cleaned and the smell of new paint dissipates, you can be sure that there will be something creative and eclectically unique going on at the cafe. Even as the landscape is changing outside his shop, Elliott plans to keep it that way, a place for the people.

“We try to support each other and help keep the economy local. It’s businesses trying to help businesses out, and that bond is a good thing.”

Elliott (second from right) spends a minute with friends. (Photo by Gary Mead)