DORA CORENA WORKS the front counter at Havana Sandwich Shop, set in a onetime convenience store on the bottom end of Buford Highway, the multicultural Atlanta corridor that serves Georgia as an on-ramp for new arrivals. On the opposite wall hangs a Cuban flag that flew atop Miss Lucky, the tiny boat that the restaurant’s cofounder Eddie Benedit piloted during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, liberating some forty people from Communist Cuba. Behind Dora, a pegboard menu reads like a greatest hits album from the post-Castro diaspora.
Dora, who has roots in El Salvador, began here in 1988, twelve years after Eddie and his wife, Debbie, along with his father and mother, Guido and Felisa Benedit, opened Havana with a menu of Cuban sandwiches, black bean soup, yellow rice, and fountain…