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HAVANA
The New Cuisine of Havana
My rst visit to Cuba in 2000 was in many ways characterized by my rst dinner, itself an introduction to the fascinating contradictions which were to unfold during my rst week in this remarkable urban culture. After suggesting a restaurant my driver delivered me to a tiny house located on an innocuous street in the Centro district, far from the more touristic plazas of Habana Vieja. In the front room of this home I experienced my rst paladar, or private restaurant, and ate succulent pollo asado while the cook’s small children raced around my table.
The paladares rst emerged in the post-Soviet era of the late 1990s, a remarkable experiment of private enterprise in a world of Cuban state agencies and state employees. These existed primarily in homes and were limited by law to only twelve chairs. In the course of my many visits during the next ten years, these tiny eating places proved to be a daily reprieve from the frequently uninspired state restaurant fare.
Cuban food can be loosely considered to fall within four distinct categories: state restaurants, street food, home cooking and privately owned and operated eating places. It is this last group that has completely transformed itself since the new economic laws of 2010, which introduced many new private enterprise licenses related to food. Cuba’s new tourism is perfectly coincident with the paladares of today which are larger, innovatively designed restaurants of high style.
The food itself has been transformed as well. The fusion Caribbean fare newly available is nonetheless inextricably fused with traditional Cuban cooking, and as such draws steady support from both tourists and the bourgeoning number of wealthier Cubans. At its roots, Cuban cuisine is generously protein rich with seafood from the island’s own waters; now even traditional langosta Batabanó, a powerful lobster dish, is likely to be reinterpreted. Some of my sturdiest favorites (ropa vieja, garbanzos fritos and sometimes even the luxuriously thick bean soup, frijoles dormidos) keep changing in subtle, innovative ways.