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By Root 1284 0

’ heel of the socialist revolution. Food is often limp and unappetizing and discourses with bored and disinterested waiters worthy of something out of a Monty Python sketch (‘we can’t do you a cheese sandwich, but we can do you a cheese and ham sandwich’). There are a few highlights in an otherwise dull field. The Palmares group runs a wide variety of excellent restaurants countrywide, from a small shabby hut on Maguana beach, Baracoa, to the New York Times–lauded El Aljibe in Miramar, Havana. Another safe, if uninspiring certainty is El Rápido, the Cuban version of McDonald’s, which offers a generic menu of microwaved pizzas, hot dogs, sandwiches and – sometimes – excellent yogurt. Cuba would do well to open more La Vicarias, where the service is uniformly good, the prices fair and the food palatable. Havana is, of course, a different ballpark, with many state-run restaurants in Habana Vieja and Miramar of excellent quality. All state-run restaurant employees earn the standard CUC$8 to CUC$13 a month, so tips are highly appreciated (see boxed text,).

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The name paladar (Portuguese for ‘taste’) is taken from a fictional restaurant of the same name that was depicted in a Brazilian soap opera called Vale Tudo in the early 1990s. The soap opera became insanely popular in Cuba and the name stuck.

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Paladares

Paladares are small family-run restaurants that are permitted to operate privately on the payment of a monthly tax to the government. First established in 1995 during the economic chaos of the Special Period, paladares owe much of their success to the sharp increase in tourist traffic on the island, coupled with the bold experimentation of the local chefs who, despite a paucity of decent ingredients, have heroically managed to keep the age-old traditions of Cuban cooking alive.

Legally, paladares are only supposed to offer 12 seats and are prohibited from selling lobster, beef or shrimps (which are a government monopoly). The reality, however, is often rather different. Through secrecy, guile or a surreptitious bending of the rules, many paladares pack well over a dozen people into carefully concealed dining rooms or romantically lit back gardens and, with meal prices hovering in the CUC$15 to CUC$20 bracket, make enough to scrape by.

Although the atmosphere between different paladares can differ significantly, the food is almost always of a superior quality to the rations offered elsewhere. Indeed, following big reviews in the New York Times, the Guardian and Cigar Aficionado magazine, leading Havana paladares such as La Guarida, La Cocina de Lilliam and La Fontana have managed to attract international attention (see boxed text,).

To allow readers to easily distinguish between private and state-run restaurants, in this book all privately operated eateries are listed as paladares. Whenever we refer to a ‘restaurant,’ it means it’s a government-operated place.

Quick Eats

Like all private industry, cafeterías (street stalls) are government-regulated so – although they might look a bit grungy – hygiene isn’t usually a problem. Cuban street pizza, with its pungent cheese and occasional glob of tomato, is surprisingly good and became the new national dish during the Special Period. Good standards on the street dining scene include batidos, asado (roasted) or breaded pork-cutlet sandwiches, fruit cocktails and ice cream. There’s also a whole category of pan con… (bread with…) – whatever can be put inside bread, from tortilla (tasty eggs) to pasta (a greasy mayonnaise substance).

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Nitza Villapol, Cuban cook and TV personality, carried on rustling up resourceful recipes throughout the darkest days of the Special Period. Indeed, legend has it that her show was once canceled after she tried to present an innovative new menu alternative called ‘black-bean dessert.’

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Keep an eye out for stalls and windows with comida criolla signs. These places sell cajitas (literally ‘little boxes’): full meals of salad, baked vegetables, congrí and pork cutlets that are sold in little take-out boxes