Cuba

Santiago de Cuba, Gran Hotel

The Pope's in Cuba this week. Havana yesterday, Holguin, in the middle of the island today, and Santiago on Cuba's southeastern, Caribbean end tomorrow. Papa Francisco is Latin America's pope, and a rockstar among modern leaders of the Catholic church. To say that the Cuban people are excited by the papal visit would be a huge understatement. But it's not even the biggest news of the summer. Back on August 14, the US flag rose above our embassy, a concrete 1953 mid-rise in the Brutalist style that could be the federal building in any midsize US city. It's in the middle of the malecon, between the deco Riviera (Lansky, 1957) on one end and the splendid old town and city center, La Habana Vieja, on the other. Were it not for the remarkably bleaker Soviet-style concrete slabs here and there, our embassy might be the most incongruous structure in a town of pastel Belle Epoque confections and crumbling colonial squares. But it's a gleaming tower of optimism today. The truth will develop over time, but today Cuba is quietly electric with anticipation of what good might come from fewer sanctions and more contact with America.

A few weeks after the flag went up, and a few weeks before the Pope arrived, I had the good fortune to visit Cuba with my family, to share in my mother-in-law's first trip back home since the Riviera was new. Like Papa Francisco, our group of 9 men, women and children would start in Havana, head to Holguin (Camaguey too), and finish up in Santiago. About 600 miles with side trips. Perhaps unlike the Pope, we'd do it in a shitty rented Renault with 200,000 miles, no A/C, and no gas gauge, along with a newer and marginally more reliable Chinese Geely - a shameful car justly ridiculed by a people renowned for keeping 1955 Buicks running with scrap metal. We'd endure record heat (in Cuba, in August) and what we hope is the end of Cuba's worst drought in 100 years. Which was perfect, because avoiding the heat is a fine art perfected by Cubans over the past 500 years. It involves rum and beer.

I won't try to hash out the historically important, complex implications of this Cuban summer for the politics, economy, culture, and religion of 11 million people living on the Caribbean's largest island. I'll try to stick to the food.


San Cristobal getting ready for Papa Francisco.

Havana

By far the largest city, the capital, and also the place that's 90 miles from Key West, Havana is the one city that most foreign travelers visit and the one place that Americans on a cheap, Vegas-like holiday used to see. Visitors might venture out to the famous beach town of Varadero, but not much more. Havana was the most cosmopolitan place we visited, with the broadest range of foods, the most fancy hotels, the biggest foreign presence. It was also the most depressing in many ways. While the old town and certain nicer neighborhoods looked great and could be anywhere in Latin America or Southern Europe, vast stretches of burned out, crumbling city blocks are just around the corner, just about everywhere. But unlike similar areas of our own Detroit or St. Louis, people still live there. You know it from the flicker of a TV and a laugh peeking through rough-hewn boards covering the empty places that used to be magnificent French doors on decrepit houses that would be rehabbed into boutique hotels in San Francisco or New Orleans. Crime, particularly violent crime, barely exists. And trash, sewage and the smells that usually come with hot squalor are not there. Somehow, basic human dignity and health are maintained as the infrastructure turns to dust. Nonetheless, Havana has a lot of people living in objectively crappy conditions that don't otherwise seem particularly prevalent on the island.


The (relatively) upscale Vedado neighborhood


Full occupancy building along the Malecon

Making do and doing well without a lot was a major theme on this trip and the way of life in Cuba. This became especially true during the "Special Period" of Cuban history - the decades following the USSR's fall and Cuba's consequent loss of it's primary patron. Like the Cuban mechanics working wonders on the TV series Cuban Chrome, Cuba's chefs do a nice job manipulating a lot of the same government-issued and rationed foods into something better than its parts. This works much better with rustic, traditional creole dishes, in my experience.

In Havana and all over the country, restaurants that cater to visitors (that's most of them; few can afford to eat out) tempt outsiders with food that fits a flawed and antiquated concept of luxury and indulgence. The ubiquitous tourist lobster meal represents the worst of it. While seafood is the island's birthright, humble neighborhood paladares don't often have it. Cubans don't spend much time in boats, for obvious reasons, and seafood is not something often handled by most Cuban kitchens. (The almost complete absence of small craft in the island's many harbors is easy to miss at first, but it's all Chinese container ships and nothing else.) Lobsters, the kings of seafood, are for tourists only, found in the fancy places. Any citizen caught with one for personal use faces serious jail time, for real. I joked that Cuban chefs torture the spiny lobsters and fish, cooking into oblivion that which is forbidden and foreign to them. There are, of course, exceptions. When the seafood is good, it's great. Very fresh and very local. But still, don't order the lobster.



The thing above was a lovely zarzuela, the classic Spanish seafood stew that is like a paella without the rice, from Castropol - which, despite the name sounding like a Russified homage to Fidel and Raul, has been around since the 30's. Below it is a traditional pulpo con papas. The restaurant is associated with Havana's Asturian Society and has a great rooftop dining room along the waterfront near the old town. It's also close by Havana's crummy, inauthentic, but interesting Chinatown.

Chinatown was the one place in all of Cuba that sort of creeped everyone out. The dingy, narrow alleys, somewhat open prostitution, and preponderance of businesses selling cheap drinks from open windows to rowdy kids stood out. While people were having fun and making music all over Cuba on our trip, no one even came remotely close to making a scene or appeared drunk and disorderly, except here. Risky behavior in this law-and-order place. By the way, Havana once had one of the largest and oldest Chinatowns in the West. NY, Miami and Tampa still have old-line Chinese-Cuban spots slinging fried rice with a milanesa on top. But Chinatown Havana is mostly a low rent clip joint kind of place now, it seems. With the revolution, Chinatown's small business owners read the writing on the wall (as many had years earlier in the old, old country) and scrammed. Almost no one of Chinese ethnicity remains. Though, the PRC has supplied a few chefs for the restaurants - including a good one from Shanghai at Tien Tan, according to multiple sources. I didn't get to try it.



Like I suggested above, the best food we had in Cuba was, unsurprisingly, Cuban food. In an outlying neighborhood west of center is El Aljibe. The history of this place is somewhat fuzzy, but the story goes that the Garcia family started serving a Cuban "Sunday dinner" spread back in '46 and they continue to do so today in a government-owned place that is so well-done and comfortable in its thatched-roof luxury that it could be in Maui or Bali. Aljibe is like a Cuban White Fence Farm but much, much better. For 12 bucks, it's all you care to eat Cuban roasted chicken (what we know as pollo chon here on LTH), the best black beans and rice we ate in Cuba, salad, platanos maduros, and other stuff. Just like abuelita's house. Sure, tourists go there. So do local, VIP types. You might want to drink the mojo on this bird.




El Aljibe's government ownership raises a point. Many supposed Western "insiders" will tell you to avoid government owned places like the plague and to seek out only private paladares. These places actually are a relatively new phenomenon in Cuba -- named after the fictional outlaw restaurant in a '90's Brazilian soap opera, the original paladares of Havana were truly under the radar and grey market semi-dangerous places (to own, at least). But they are now everywhere, and the government gets its cut. The legendary La Guardia, hidden in a dilapidated apartment tower, still gets great reviews. However, we ate some wonderful food in state run places and terrible food in certain paladares. In fact, the latter class of restaurants has given birth to an ingenious, pernicious subgroup - what I'd call a Potemkin's village cafe. Here's what happens: a concierge or driver urges you to try his friend's paladar for the best food in town. Soon you arrive at an eerily empty room with a few tables decked out in hotel linens. You are given a laminated menu with everything written in English, and prices are 2-3 times higher than they should be. And the food is terrible. The restaurant exists when you show up. Otherwise, it's not clear what the hell is happening in that room. And in a country where everyone makes $20 a month, you'd better believe this weird con is worth it for a $300 dinner tab. We were able to detect and reject this scam a few times, which was kind of fun.

Booze in Cuba

See the professional looking guy up there with the crisp white shirt behind the Havana Club sign? That guy's everywhere in Cuba. A real, old-school pro bartender making classic cocktails and pouring cold, if unexciting, Cristal, Bucanero and Presidente (Cuba's national Pilsner, lager, and import, respectively). Rum and whiskey, and rum, is what you want to focus on in Cuba. With a hand-shaken daiquiri, icy tall rum collins, or perfect mojito (mercifully light on the sugar here) ringing up at 2-4 bucks far and wide, you can't go wrong. And, while there is some extraordinary liquor on the island, bad booze simply does not exist. The worst you'll get is 3 year old Havana Club. Stepping aside from the trip's temporal and geographic order for a minute, let's talk about the drinks of Cuba. To oversimplify it, nothing changed and that's a good thing. The same respect for bar tending and drinks remains from the Cuba of Sinatra and the Mambo Kings. It probably seemed corny in 1987, but I think a lot of people would appreciate it now.


The above daiquiri was a typical $3 drink, this time from a terrific open-air bar overlooking the main square in Camaguey, a centrally located colonial town with a warren of narrow, winding streets in the middle of Cuba's cowboy country and the city with what we found to be the best food in Cuba. More below.



Outside bar at the grand dame Hotel Nacional, and exterior, Havana


Lobby bar, Hotel Inglaterra, Havana

The drink lists tend to be be traditional, but large enough to please most drinkers. That said, the government test for bartenders is apparently very comprehensive and I was not able to stump any barmen with a "real" (pre-Pegu Club) cocktail. Here's one from a run of the mill bar in Santiago:



Tradition is, of course, respected. If there's anyone on par with Che, Fidel, Jose, Abe or Vladimir on the island, it's Ernest. The bars he frequented tend to be tourist traps, but good tourist traps like the Green Mill or Arnaud's. La Floridita in Havana is the home of the daiquiri. For chrissakes, only order your daiquiri natural and colado (strained). They do have blenders in Cuba, however, and at least one place puts them to good use. (More on that soon.)


Note the Jack Daniels, center left.

Further down, nearer the cathedral is La Bodeguita del Medio, another legendary haunt of Papa (the Oak Park one), which lays claim to the mojito.


Keep walking….



to 304 O'Reilly. This narrow storefront, address-named spot in Havana's old town would be hard to spot from the street, given its lack of signage and low key vibe. (Yeah, one of the main streets in La Habana Vieja, ending at the Plaza de las Armas (the castle) is named O'Reilly.) This is basically a Paul McGee or Danny Shapiro joint happening in the original home of the cocktail. And focusing on gin and juice, no less. This place exists in a different dimension than any other spot we visited in Cuba. That dimension is - big city, 2015, not in Cuba. As modern and "normal" as the bar felt to a Chicagoan, it was excellent by any standard. The small plates are fantastic and involve produce I didn't see anywhere else (I had great ceviche and a fresh take on the national dish, a vegetable stew, ajiaco). I started with one of the better Negroni variations I've had (and I've had a lot) and moved on to one of the infusion-based G&Ts. Here's the menu, not including an extensive daily chalkboard:



With drinks in the $4-6 range, 304 O'Reilly is outrageously pricey by Cuban standards. (Cuban "tourist money" or CUCs, are tied 1:1 with the $USD, so you always know what you are paying, even though you'll want to bring Euros to change to CUCs due to a steep exchange penalty on US cash.) Here's what you get (bartender working the tweezers; daiquiri with mango; frozen daiquiri, natural; mojito with melon):






Each of these drinks (and the others that I had) was outstanding. And it bears mentioning that the produce used in these drinks is especially precious in Cuba right now. A potential crisis was averted when the resort we stopped at outside Holguin (Playa Pesquero) finally received a generous shipment of limes. The drought and heat have all but wiped them out on the island and Cuban cocktails aren't much without limes.

Santiago de Cuba and Rum

Obviously, rum is king in Cuba, though the locals do have a taste for whiskeys, including the easier-to-get Scotch and Canadian; but bourbon is enjoyed when available. Even a simple roadside hut selling fried chicken and beer will have a bottle of Chivas on hand, next to the Havana Club. A decent bottle of American brown would be incredibly well-received down there, should you ever visit (more likely now than ever in 50 years). But there's little reason to drink anything but rum when in Cuba, and little reason not to drink Santiago if you can find it. Its namesake town is the second largest in Cuba - a place of striking beauty that brings to mind San Francisco or Rio. A city of steep hills, leading down to a deep bay, with the high Sierra Maestra in the background. It's the seat of every Cuban revolution. And, frankly, a lot more pleasant in many ways than Havana. Someday people are going to go nuts over Santiago. The town is to rum as Havana is to cigars or Louisville is to bourbon. It was a place of stupendous wealth from the sugar fields, and the home of the Bacardis. The rum to drink there, and anywhere you can find it in Cuba, is Santiago de Cuba. The 11, 12, and 20 years are awesome, but the more basic anejo is better than it needs to be, too. There's also a 25 year that I saw once or twice, which I'm sure is spectacular. Otherwise, the ubiquitous, partially French-managed, Havana Club is plenty good. Unfortunately for those of us that travel a bit for work, the Santiago brand is not exported. So you wont find it in a duty free in the EU or Mexico. But you are permitted to take it out of the country per the ordinary customs rules.


Asuncion Cathedral from the roof of the Gran Hotel de Santiago, with the excellent 1950's modernist Bank of Cuba building on the square.

View down the hill.

We missed the last rum factory tour in Santiago, but were able to liberate a few bottles on the way out of town.

Cigars

What goes better with rum? Habanos confirmed their position among the very best after a few down years of overproduction and underachieving in response to the "cigar boom" of the late 1990s (things move slowly in Cuba, and in agriculture, particularly with aged products like tobacco leaf). The iconic original Partagas factory near the old town in Havana is shuttered for rehab these days, but those top rollers are now over at the Romeo y Julieta/H. Upmann facility making the world's finest cigars on the same ancient equipment as they have for hundreds of years.





For anyone who's interested in the price of cigars in Cuba, I bought a 25 box of my all-time favorites, Ramon Allones, Allones Specially Selected, for around $150. That's a great price for such a terrific cigar, but not insanely so. The touristy (but good) brands such as Cohiba and Trinidad are no bargain at all, priced at 2-3 times what a Partagas, Montecristo, R&J or Allones costs. So go in knowing your stuff and pick up a few individual smokes before committing big money. With the $100-per-adult limit on cigars and rum for returning US citizens (on a valid license to travel to Cuba), it's a great risk to pay much more than we did for anything.

Camaguey and Holgin - Country Food

Next, I want to mention two interior, central towns that we visited on our road trip across the island, with stops at the small hill towns of Mayari and Cueto near Holguin to visit my in law's old stomping grounds.

Camaguey was a pleasant surprise. A cool colonial town made up of twisting streets flowing downhill from the church square. We weren't there for long and weren't expecting much (not much info is available online) but we had our best meal of the trip in this "cowboy" city surrounded by rolling pastureland. Restaurante 1800 in Plaza San Juan is about as pleasant as it gets. A true paladar, apparently, this family run spot in a very old building has a number of white-tablecloth tables on a small church square maybe 1/2 a mile from the main plaza. Good service by eager young English majors (speaking perfect, American newscaster-accented English and having never left town), terrific drinks, terrific food, all under the stars on a night when the heat mercifully broke and a breeze blew in from the coast.

Camaguey is famous for its tasajo (dried beef or horse meat reconstituted like bacalao) and for its ropa vieja, the shredded beef flank dish that is well-known to most who have tried Cuban food. I can honestly say that 1800's ropa vieja was the best rendition of a Cuban staple that I tasted on the trip, and the best version of that dish I have had. That's big praise considering how many plates of ropa I've had over the years. Unfortunately, they had just one portion left, which we shared as an appetizer. It escaped the camera, as did my extraordinary chilindron - a Cuban twist on an old Spanish staple from Aragon, according to Spanish Wikipedia. Sometimes made with goat or chicken, my lamb chilindron would appeal to anyone who enjoys nihari, carbonnade, or anything else that involves delicious, long-stewed red meat. Others had small, pink shrimp enchilados from the nearby coast. They were well-handled and not overcooked at all, in contrast to much of the seafood we ate in Cuba. Reading up on 1800 after the trip, it seems that folks within Cuba are recognizing it as one of the country's best.


Camaguey rooftops

Setting the table at 1800


Holguin wasn't much more than a short stop in the college town on the way to one of Cuba's big, government-owned and managed beach resorts. I'll save that experience for another post or beers, but I'll condense the report like this: Playa Pesquero is a beautiful place on a pristine white beach, staffed by wonderful, extremely hard-working Cubans who have a great attitude despite some challenges serving UK and Canadian tourists loads of luxury food and drink in an all-inclusive setting. Mostly a workingman's holiday sort of place, the largely UK guests can't be blamed for treating a beach resort for what it is and living it up for 2 weeks, Cabo Wabo style, $1200 a head, airfare included. The food was surprisingly great and varied, including fresh seafood, with an emphasis on Cuban regional dishes. That said, most were loading up on steaks and french fries, which were excellent too. Our group had a swell time enjoying the weather, the water, and the people working at the resort -- none of whom had ever met a US citizen. Amazing as it seems, we heard that a lot, everywhere we went outside of Havana. Canadians are all over Havana and the resorts, but we "Americanos" were totally unique and an object of interest and speculation. We answered a million smart questions.

One thing that we saw at the resort but not elsewhere: lechon asado happening. According to my kids, it was great. It was picked clean by the time I arrived. Hours before, I was interested to talk to the cookers who sat next to this fire tending the pigs on a 95 degree day (been there myself). As with the Eastern NC/TN style I prefer, these guys cook the meat pretty close to a fairly hot fire for only 4-6 hours. This is not competition BBQ. It's a hog roast with tried and true times, temps, and dimensions going back 500 years. These animals were approximately 90# each:




Typical stand selling lechon and fruit on the way out of town from Mayari, a town made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club, along with nearby Cueto.


Typical roadside grill - a Cuban "highway oasis" with sandwiches, beer and rum. The roads could get tricky and rough from time to time, but they were mostly fine. The real delays came from bikes, horses, cows, and other animals on the road, plus the almost omnipresent breakdowns -- including our own.



Government Cheese (and Ham)

Last, the one culinary thread on our journey: state-issued ham and cheese. Along with a surprisingly tasty whole grain sub roll that was not Cuban bread (that did exist, but you sometimes had to look), our constant Cuban companions on this trip were a pungent, thinly-sliced yellow cheese that fell somewhere between gouda and cheddar and a round of salty, particulate ham-loaf that wasn't half bad, for what it was. They showed up as a couple everywhere, all the time, especially in the early hours like old friends. Oh, and papaya (called fruta bomba in Cuba, referring to its blandness). Succulent fruit from the ugly, weed-like and hardy plant was everywhere despite the drought. The two big fruit seasons in many tropical places are mango and papaya, and the beautiful shady mango trees were barren this trip. I like both.

The ham and cheese, as modest as they are to us, were treated like gold by the Cubans handling them. No doubt the cheese, especially, is expensive. Perhaps that's why, on the roads near Holguin and Camaguey, the center lanes of the highways are often occupied by cowboys on foot, horses tied on the shoulder. The vaqueros hold large blocks of queso blanco high overhead toward the scorching sun, two large Cuban crackers in the other hand and, sometimes, guava paste. Someone must stop to buy this cheese (possibly illegal cheese from "surplus" milk on the farm), or the flapping live fowl these death-defiers less often hold out, mid-passing lane. We never once saw it, though.


Jamon y queso, here with fresh vegetables, eggs and fries. Home made guava jam on the side, Havana.


Jamon y queso in good company with made-to-order Cuban churros (made with yuca and lighter than other churros), Cuban bread, imported jamon Serrano, croquets, chile, Holguin.


Jamon y queso with papaya, papaya juice and "breakfast sausage," possibly based on the same ham, Camaguey.


Pressed ham and cheese sandwich, on the road.

What we didn't see much of were Cuban sandwiches. The ham, cheese, bread, and lechon were there. The will to combine them into a single sandwich was not. More proof that Cuban sandwiches hail from Ybor City.

It's a great place to visit. I hope to go back some day.


Fruit and juice stand, Oriente Province


Highway into Santiago


Hotel Nacional, Havana


Santiago

I think this may be the most excited I've ever been to see a post go up--and it didn't disappoint. GREAT stuff. Smiled over the Cuban sandwich line. Made me remember being in college, first trip to Spain, naïve as hell and disappointed not to find our "Spanish Bean Soup" anywhere. Thanks man.

Evocatively written and illustrated, Jeff! I hope to follow soon with a post on the egg rolls of Havana. I might need a few negronis and some Aljibe mojo for courage.

I love the idea of the places that have been around through 80+ years of as tumultuous a ride as one can find in this hemisphere. Like traditional music, there are some buoys that don't ever go entirely below the waves. Thank you for sharing these experiences with us.

Very cool, awesome report. Will be interesting to see how Cuba develops, would be a pity if it becomes homogenized like the rest of the Caribbean. Do they have a master plan for how they want to control development of the tourist business? I'm sure it's very tempting for them to rake as much cash as they can as quick as they can.

Thanks for letting me imagine I was someplace outside of my drab cubicle! Fabulous post.

Beautiful job Jeff. You hit all of the itchy areas needing a descriptive, probing scratch. Enjoyed it thoroughly, feel that I now know a bit more about Cuba's present trajectory. Tnx!

Geo

Jeff this is wonderful, I'm saving part of this for tonight when I can sit down a savor it. Thank you.

Thanks for the kind words, all.

Eddie, I'm not sure a specific plan for throngs of tourists is in the cards. The future is bright, but a change in the White House could easily go the other way. (Especially if one of the Cuban American candidates wins.) As it is, a TON of Canadians and Brits go to the beaches near Havana, though they mostly seem uninterested in the country otherwise - despite oft-noted concerns that the Americans will "ruin" Cuba for them. Scratch the surface and that means "make the all inclusive resorts more expensive." In that sense, parts of the island are already like much of the Caribbean and Mexico in terms of tourist-only beach destinations (though I see a lot of distinct cultures there in Caribbean places like Haiti, the DR, Jamaica and Trinidad to name a few). Havana's a big city with an old but solid surplus of hotel rooms going back to its golden age. The rest of the country is a different matter. Not a lot of places to stay and not super easy to get to.

For some time, accessibility might be an issue for the non-Havana parts. The national highway famously ended midway through its construction with the revolution, and the last several miles to Santiago are a tough slog. The airport is inadequate. But that doesn't explain why tourists basically do not visit the extraordinary ancient city of Santiago. AP just had a remarkable piece on your question and the dearth of visitors to Santiago. See below. It notes that 20 times more visitors hit the small beach town of Varadero than Cuba's second biggest and most beautiful city last year. One hopes that the pope's highly visible time there helps. Note that he met the crowds in the church square pictured above. The press has so few pictures of Santiago, they've been using stock pictures of it with ochre paint going back a few years. The nearby mountain chapel of El Cobre (where he held mass) is truly spectacular but I wasn't able to get there this time.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e9b3b953 ... e-left-out

Bueno, muchos gracias.

JeffB wrote:Thanks for the kind words, all.

Eddie, I'm not sure a specific plan for throngs of tourists is in the cards. The future is bright, but a change in the White House could easily go the other way. (Especially if one of the Cuban American candidates wins.) As it is, a TON of Canadians and Brits go to the beaches near Havana, though they mostly seem uninterested in the country otherwise - despite oft-noted concerns that the Americans will "ruin" Cuba for them. Scratch the surface and that means "make the all inclusive resorts more expensive." In that sense, parts of the island are already like much of the Caribbean and Mexico in terms of tourist-only beach destinations (though I see a lot of distinct cultures there in Caribbean places like Haiti, the DR, Jamaica and Trinidad to name a few). Havana's a big city with an old but solid surplus of hotel rooms going back to its golden age. The rest of the country is a different matter. Not a lot of places to stay and not super easy to get to.

...The press has so few pictures of Santiago, they've been using stock pictures of it with ochre paint going back a few years. The nearby mountain chapel of El Cobre (where he held mass) is truly spectacular but I wasn't able to get there this time.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e9b3b953 ... e-left-out

Great article, Santiago sounds fascinating. It's amazing how broad a path the Spaniards cut through the new world, how they kept control and left such a legacy over such a huge expanse of two continents is incredible.

It'll be interesting to see how this develops in Cuba. They've had the opportunity to be outside looking in as the global tourism boom swept over their neighbors the past 50 years. Personally, I find most of the Caribbean depressing and I only go there on business junkets. You've got these GringoWorld microzones walled off from the rest of that society, trying to maintain the illusion of a tropical paradise - while the inhabitants cater to the privileged while scraping out an existence. I much prefer Mexico (anywhere but Cancun), maybe my perception is skewed but they seem to live with a lot more dignity and happiness than the islanders.

My first trip to Jamaica I was very young, and the country was under the Socialist regime of Michael Manley - closely aligned with Castro. As in Cuba, basic needs like housing, healthcare, food and education were provided by the government. And hey, I've never met happier people in my life before or after. We were down there for a week and were off the reservation every day, never felt the least bit threatened and genuinely welcome everywhere. We might have been Americans with money, but they were living in one of the most beautiful places on earth and they had no worries about how to get through to the next day. I had the distinct impression they felt they were dealt the better hand in life, and I had to agree with them. Then I returned 30 years later, and it was complete 180 - seems like everyone was gripped with despair, with the over arching goal of getting off the island ASAP

So again, it'll be interesting to see how they manage this transition, as US influence weighs on them it'll be a lot harder for the Communist party to maintain control. Hopefully the people don't lose as this all shakes out.

Bravura effort, Comrade B. One of the most intriguing, data-filled food/travel posts ever.

Having visited Havana and a few other Cuban cities in the 90s, I was predictably taken aback by the paucity of goods in most grocery stores: scant fresh veg, no fresh meat, but seven or eight types of mustard that some central planning bureaucrat thought should be stocked. Perhaps some of this has changed even in advance of the American rapprochement.

This lack of readily available goods fuels the black market and encourages a style of “poor cuisine” – Moros y Cristianos would be the classic of that type – that requires only the most basic ingredients. My prediction is when higher quality ingredients are available, and higher incomes to purchase them, simple dishes enjoyed during the bad old days will be fondly remembered for their simplicity and elemental deliciousness, as well as for the comfort they brought in hard times. Just as Native Americans love their fry bread and Japanese their genmaicha tea (both born of privation), I believe that food and drink that Cubans ate during the Castro regime will become revered traditional foods, often preferred even when fancier items are more readily available.

Didn't know that lobster was forbidden to average citizens. When we were there, we asked to have (and cover all costs for) a lobster dinner for us and two families in Varadero. Lobster was procured from a guy who came by on a bike, and dinner was made at the home of a doctor. The Americans ate the lobster but the Cubans opted for chicken; I didn't understand why as we had offered to pay for everything, and the reason may be that the Cubans were concerned about legal ramifications of enjoying the seafood harvested (illegally) off their shores. Or maybe they didn't like lobster. There may have been other reasons, too. There's a lot of mystery in Cuba, some fascinating and some frightening.

David Hammond wrote:This lack of readily available goods fuels the black market and encourages a style of “poor cuisine” – Moros y Cristianos would be the classic of that type – that requires only the most basic ingredients.

David, your point is well taken, but Moros y Cristianos have been enjoyed in Cuba since long before the Castro regime came to power. I have a Cuban friend whose parents were doctors who left Cuba before the revolution. Moros y Cristianos were a staple at every dinner I ever ate at their house.

stevez wrote:

David Hammond wrote:This lack of readily available goods fuels the black market and encourages a style of “poor cuisine” – Moros y Cristianos would be the classic of that type – that requires only the most basic ingredients.

David, your point is well taken, but Moros y Cristianos have been enjoyed in Cuba since long before the Castro regime came to power. I have a Cuban friend whose parents were doctors who left Cuba before the revolution. Moros y Cristianos were a staple at every dinner I ever ate at their house.

Steve, I'm sure Moros y Cristianos -- a simple, economical meal -- was enjoyed before the Castro bros came to power, and I would chart the hard times in that country to have been started even before Batista came to power.

Just curious, when you had dinner at your doctor friends' house, were the Moros y Cristianos a side or the main course?

Fascinating post - I can't say I have a strong desire to visit Cuba, though I have a desire to learn more about it and how it has changed (including in terms of cooking style and ingredients) since the US embargo, and I feel like I learned quite a bit from your terrific post.

David Hammond wrote:
Just curious, when you had dinner at your doctor friends' house, were the Moros y Cristianos a side or the main course?

It was generally a side dish, unless it was part of Arroz con Pollo (which was often the case).

Quick thoughts on a few things: Eddie, your contrasting experiences in Jamaica are very apt. I didn't mean for my thoughts on Cuba to come off as overwhelmingly critical or glum. The people of Cuba, maybe unsurprisingly, feel pretty good about a lot of things and are having a nice time in general, even as things fall apart and get taped back up around them. Life expectancy is Japan-like, which is not at all the case all over Latin America and might not be true if Cubans ate what we think of as Cuban food all the time. Health care is good, and Cuba has long been an exporter of doctors and medical expertise. Artists, musicians (serious musicians, not just pop stars), writers and intellectuals are held in very high esteem and are probably doing the best compared to other folks. In part, this is because they get to travel and can keep some of the dough from selling paintings, books, or performances around the world. Education is paramount. The kids go to school and seem to take it quite seriously. So, so many squeaky clean little kids in their crisp school duds everywhere all the time, whether in an urban barrio or on a dirt road with more horses than cars out in the hills. I might have a picture here somewhere, but we were leaving Havana on the first day back from summer vacation and it was something to see.

Despite the rhetoric from both sides of the Straits of Florida over who is responsible for the supposed "genocide" and starvation in Cuba, the reality on the ground is that people generally appear to have what they need. Emaciated, hungry people were not roaming the streets asking for a crust of bread anywhere we looked, and no one was paying any attention to where we were looking -- from big towns to tiny villages. As i said above, most are doing well with what they've got. There's not a ton of jealously (nor positive striving for material achievement), though human nature is immutable and envy relative-- the guy driving Canadians to the beach in his cherry '57 Bel Air might get the stink eye from the guy on the side of the road cutting weeds back with a machete. But the huge disparity of wealth just isn't there. And the hypocrisy factor is relatively low. We spent time with some VIP-types and while they were doing better than the regular guy on the street, they were not in any way living an opulent lifestyle.

The nearly complete absence of violence (which might come with a certain absence of due process if not justice) cannot be overstated. Violence and illicit drugs are health problems, too, and Cuba doesn't seem to have them. I too prefer Mexico and Central America to the relatively bland Caribbean beach islands (and here I am thinking places that never had much local culture or population anyway, such as Aruba and the Caymans), but all of the above are infinitely more dangerous places than Cuba for the random person on the street minding his or her own business. I was in the Bahamas earlier in the summer, and owe a report on what was an unexpectedly swell time in some of the more remote and chill islands, but the typical US cruise ship tourist ambling around Nassau has a very, very good chance of having a machete jabbed into his paunch and being relieved of his wallet, at best, in broad daylight in a tourist friendly area. I worry what might happen if things change Russia-fast in Cuba someday. Drugs and criminal money move fast, and violence comes with it.

Moros are an ancient dish in Cuba, and I'm sure they are eaten more now than ever. The odd (to us) inclusion of rum as a seasoning in many humble versions of the dish took some getting used to, but rum is one thing people can get that tastes like something and isn't expensive.

A proper arroz con pollo is actually a deceptively complex dish that involves many steps including frying stuff, removing it, and adding it back later. A very Spanish thing that you see in other cuisines, particularly Asian. But to Steve's point, the rice is the star of that show (it's not pollo con arroz) and it is always a long-cooked saffron scented yellow rice that turns out something like risotto or a paella with one ingredient. No beans. For whatever reason, arroz con pollo (and baked ziti) are the only dishes you get at school banquets and cheap weddings in Tampa, and it's usually terrible. When it's good it is a treat. El Aljibe naturally makes a spectacular-looing arroz con pollo in a clay pot, which the locals all seemed to get, but we went with the famous pollo asado rather than invest the extra 40 minutes needed for the scratch dish.

Last, although the laws are tough and the police are stopping people for no apparent reason here and there (we never got stopped), the paranoia associated with communism, and this specific regime, was not particularly apparent. At least now, and among the people we spoke with, plenty of regular folk were casually critical of the regime and the way things work.

And this just keeps getting better...

Spectacularly interesting!

Definitely different from a friend's report of going to Cuba some 10-15 years ago with a "cultural exchange" and being monitored and shepherded around in a very curated manner. They all wanted to just wander and find local food and speak with normal Cubans and were thwarted at every turn. Their observations mirrored a lot of yours, but they were definitely not able to do anything on their own.

Jeff,
thanks for turning a dull, late-lunch at my desk into a spectacular journey. What a post!!

Bourdain's latest series, Parts Unknown, kicks off a new season today with a Cuba episode that seems to cover some of the same ground, at least in Havana and in Santiago (which he didn't previously visit). I saw that it's already controversial for supposedly glorifying the regime, according to some. Politics and Bourdain's musings aside, his producers often do a fine job researching and finding good stuff and the photography is usually excellent. Take his Chicago episodes, for example.

CNN at 8.

Tremendous rundown. I think that just about covers the globe for LTH. From the island of Cuba to Cuba City Wisconsin, it's all on here. Did you happen to talk any religion (baseball) with the locals? If so how do they (and Govnt.) feel about the islands best players leaving for MLB? Can they watch the games? I know it's gotten much easier for players to leave but one of the most interesting reads of last year was this piece on Yasiel Puig's defection. Thanks for the intel.

I talked a little baseball with a few people, including local relatives. But it's a touchy subject. I think they are both proud and disappointed. You probably know this, but the Cuba national uniform is a direct ripoff/homage to the Cubs uni, so the Cubs gear we brought down made for interesting/confusing gifts. Also, Holguin's team, which seems popular, is the Cachorros. That means "Cubs," but the term technically identifies wolf cubs and puppies, not bear cubs (which is oseznos, from what I've read). Nonetheless, the Chicago Cubs are universally called Los Cachorros de Chicago in Latin America, in my experience.

Of course, Chicago's great historical Cuban beisbol connection is from the South Side -- (future) Hall of Famer Minnie Miñoso, who passed earlier this year.

Like much of the news in Cuba, baseball news gets around from folks working in hotels and resorts with cable. Whenever I walked into a hotel bar or gym with cable (or satellite) TV, it was tuned to Spanish language ESPN or the Yankees Network.

By the way, I saw the Bourdain episode and have some mixed feelings about it. It seems that much of the food journalism wound up on the cutting room floor or in internet outtakes, with the show emphasizing more political themes, the arts, and drag racing. I assume that's what the producers and Bourdain found most compelling once they took a look at the files. And maybe there's still not a lot of nice things to say about the food, while he wanted to be nice in this episode.

Typically, there were lots of facile comments about greedy Americans poised to swoop in and ruin everything with their Starbucks and need for frozen pina coladas. Though the Cubans' reactions were not universally in line with his (admittedly selfish) concerns. Bourdain spent some time living it up (it looked genuinely fun) with a group of people who are clearly doing much better personally and politically than the regular guy on the street, making his chestnuts more palatable. But I guess that's always true with his adventures abroad; it's his shtick with no apologies and it works.

I thought that the cameras and editors did a remarkable job of capturing Havana as we saw it, presumably just a short time later. The rooftop shots and the long ending sequence along the malecon resonated. But the short bit on Santiago was the opposite and just weird. After showing the countryside for 10 seconds and explaining that Cuba is not Havana, Bourdain spent the last 5-10 minutes nibbling around the charred edges of the second biggest town. It is not an endless throng of people in the streets wilding to some kind of Cuban gangster rap. I'm not saying he claimed it was, and his interview of the rap artist actually reflected the fact that it's not really a widely-available or officially respected genre. I just found it odd that the only coverage of Santiago was focused on the side streets, literally and figuratively, of a remarkable place that pretty much no one knows anything about. But that's his prerogative as the artist. And, while he mentioned the rum and showed folks drinking from bottles of Santiago de Cuba, Bourdain never really mentioned anything about it, except that it was really good.

He's still doing this much better than anyone else and his crew does a spectacular job -- I assume with lots of final input from the man. I'll forgive that he consistently pronounced Havana with a flourish and Spanish accent, as if it's the Spanish word for the city, while conspicuously mangling actual Spanish place names (like Siboney/"C-bony"). A tale of 2 cities that was good overall but not his best.

Beautiful report, Jeff.

I enjoyed Havana five or six times during my hitch in the Navy. It was a favorite liberty port- you could get into more trouble, for less money, than any other place I visited around the Atlantic or the Med... I shared a couple of daiquiris with Ol' Ernie as he held court at the left end of the bar in Floridita in 1955 or '56. He was happy to chat and let a trio of young Navy officers buy the drinks. We hung out at Sloppy Joe's bar/restaurant where I learned to make their Especial sandwich which was a daunting stack of mixed cold cuts, pickles and cheese between two huge slabs of that wonderful Cuban bread. Today it would feed me for a week. It was $1. It was washed down with two or three bottles of Hatuey.

You did mention the beer but -- WHERE IS THE ONE-EYED INDIAN???
Hemingway insisted that the Cubans brewed some of the world's finest beers. Their brewmeisters were expat Germans.

Oddly enough, I don't have any memory of what is now sold in the U.S. as the Cubano sandwich.

I loved everything about pre-Castro Cuba and always looked forward to visiting. We spent a few days in early '57 in Santiago and were befriended and shown around by a group of lovely college girls who, looking back on it much later, were almost certainly members of Castro's movement which was then coming together in the vicinity.

Mike, thanks for your memories. I think it's safe to say that Havana 1956 is/was an incredible time and place never to be repeated. From what I hear and see, that probably goes for Chicago, and NY and a lot of other places, too.

I believe that Bacardi won its fight with Cuba over the rights to Hatuey several years ago (I want to say early or mid-90s). The brand was heavily marketed to the ex-pat Cuban and otherwise Latino community in Florida for years, but I haven't seen it lately (nor have I looked for it). The Bacardi version was nothing special and not worth buying over the similar Dominican Presidente, which is cheap and cold everywhere in South Florida.

I was a little surprised by how much Cubans seemed to enjoy a beer, having assumed that Cubans in FL picked it up here. Beer in Cuba is relatively expensive, and choices are incredibly limited. I literally saw 3 brands the whole time - Cristal, Bucanero, and Presidente. The rum is so good and so cheap (relatively speaking), I couldn't imagine buying much beer. But I don't doubt Cubans had good beer in the old days. The German and Czech brewers clearly got around much of Latin America, with varying results and legacies that live on.

...which reminds me of an Abaco Bahamas post I owe. Let's see, $20 a six back for truly shitty local (or Dutch - Bavaria brand) beer or $8 for a fith of Barbancourt?

Being an agricultural official in Cuba these days is like living in a resort town all your friends want to visit. You rarely get a moment to yourself. For months, Havana’s government offices and its prettiest urban farms have been filled with American bureaucrats, seed sellers, food company executives and farmers who spend their evenings eating meals made with ingredients often imported or smuggled into restaurants that most Cubans can’t afford.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/dinin ... -ipad&_r=0