Cuba - Lonely Planet [47]
An increasing number of places can whip up a refreshing limonada (limeade). Pure jugo (fruit juice), refresco (instant-powdered drink) and batidos (fruit milkshakes) are sold in street stalls for a few pesos and are tasty and usually safe to drink. Small 250mL juice boxes with attached straws are ubiquitous in Cuba and can be bought in bars and grocery stores for 50 to 80 centavos. They come in about a dozen different flavors from orange to mango.
Guarapo is a pure sugarcane juice mixed with ice and served from quaint little roadside stalls all over Cuba. If you’re a long-distance cyclist, forget Gatorade, this is the ultimate energy drink. Prú is a special nonalcoholic brew from the Oriente made from spices, fermented yuca and secret ingredients prú-meisters won’t divulge.
Tap-water quality is variable and many Cubans have gory amoebic tales, including giardia. To be safe you can drink agua natural (bottled water), but that gets expensive over longer trips. You can also boil it (the local method) or buy bottled chlorine drops called Gotica. Available in most stores that sell products in Convertibles for CUC$1.25, one drop makes 3L of drinkable water; this works well in the provinces, but in Havana it’s better to boil or buy bottled water. Don’t touch the water in Santiago, even to brush your teeth. It’s famously dirty – and brown!
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CELEBRATIONS
New Year’s Eve, birthdays, family reunions, weddings: whatever the reason, big events are celebrated with lechón asado (roast pork). As much about the process and camaraderie as the food, a pig roast is a communal effort where the jokes fly, the rum flows and dancing or dominó is de rigueur. Once the pig is killed, cleaned and seasoned, it’s slowly pit-roasted over a charcoal fire. Traditional sides include yuca con mojo (yuca with garlic and lime sauce), congrí and salad.
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The farming of cows is state-controlled in Cuba, meaning beef can only legally be sold in state-run restaurants. In the past, beef smugglers were handed stiff jail sentences.
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Pig roast is also the street food of choice for the regular fiestas that enliven numerous Cuban towns at weekends, especially in the Oriente. Classic examples can be observed (and tasted) in Bayamo, Manzanillo, Guantánamo, Ciego de Ávila and other towns.
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WHERE TO EAT & DRINK
State-Run Restaurants
Restaurant opening hours are generally 11am to 11pm daily, although staff sometimes drift off for lunch unannounced, or will be too busy counting stock to serve you right away. Government-run restaurants take either Cuban pesos or Convertibles. Peso restaurants are notorious for handing you a nine-page menu (in Spanish), when the only thing available is fried chicken. Obviously, you’re supposed to pick up this information via telepathy because you’ll sit for half an hour or more before learning this while the waitress falls asleep, wakes up, takes a phone call, files her nails, wipes the bar with a dirty cloth and falls asleep again. But it’s not all pain and stomachache. Some peso restaurants are quite good; all are absurdly cheap and they’re often your only option off the tourist circuit, so don’t discount them altogether (Doña Yulla is a nationwide chain to look out for). Sometimes workers in peso restaurants either won’t show you the menu in an effort to overcharge you, or they will charge Convertibles at a one-to-one ratio – making the food ridiculously overpriced. Verify before you order that you’re looking at peso prices (meals will be in the 15- to 25-peso range). Some peso restaurants have one menu in Convertibles at a reasonable rate and another in pesos.
Restaurants that sell food in Convertibles are generally more reliable, but this isn’t capitalism: just because you’re paying more doesn’t necessarily mean better service. In fact, after a week or two roaming the streets of Cuba’s untouristed provincial towns in search of a decent meal, you’ll quickly realize that Cuban restaurants are the Achilles