Cuba Tips for American Travelers — Part 4: Food
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What to Expect
I have always loved Cuban food since I was a kid, so leading up to our 10-day trip I was excited to gorge myself on ropa vieja, picadillo, hot pressed Cuban sandwiches, sweet plantains, and more. Then we started talking to friends who had been to Cuba recently. Everyone said the food was terrible. So much so that we packed pepper packets and travel-sized tabasco to bring to restaurants, plus a stash of granola bars to enable us to skip meals, and resigned ourselves to eating for sustenance for the duration of our trip.
Starting with those rock bottom expectations, we were pleasantly surprised by many of our meals and there were even some stand outs. The food really can be quite good. That said, due to lack of access to ingredients, you’re not going to get a lot of what you see on menus in Cuban restaurants in the States. I never saw picadillo on a menu and while I ordered ropa vieja every time it was listed, I think I ate it three times — beef is hard to come by in Cuba, so even when those dishes are on the menu, often they’re not actually available. In fact it’s not unusual for you to be ready to place an order at a restaurant only to learn that whole categories of the menu are not available.
A quick note on access to ingredients. Because of the US embargo, Cuba’s trade options are pretty limited (fun fact: if a ship docks in Cuba, it’s not allowed to dock in a US port for six months). And while it’s a big island, it’s still hard to grow or make everything you want or need within the confines of a relatively small economy. So for the most part you are eating what they can grow/make, meaning availability is seasonal and therefore a lot of what you eat is just whatever is local and fresh. For example, no potatoes in December, it’s just not the season. And because access to spices is limited, whatever is available is pretty consistently cooked in primarily salt, garlic, and onion — a delicious trifecta but one that can admittedly get a little boring after a few days if you’re used to a ton of variety.
So, in short, while the food in Cuba didn’t have much in common with the spice-filled, super-flavorful dishes I was used to in New York and Miami, the good news is we didn’t need many of those granola bars. Our best guess as to why we had a better gastronomic experience than our friends who had been to Cuba previously is two-fold.
First, in 2011 Raúl Castro loosened some of the government restrictions on private enterprise in Cuba, which created the ability for individuals to open restaurants in their homes, called paladares. In our experience these tended to be more unique and higher quality than the government-owned restaurants and cafeterías, even in Havana. And from what we’ve heard there are more of these opening each year, and lots of the newer ones have great reputations. So maybe we just went at a good time. Second, my guess is that if you’re not making a reservation at a top restaurant (and they do require reservations), steering clear of the more touristy places might be key, so at bottom I’m including a list of a few of the best places we ate in Havana (for Viñales and Trinidad, see my posts on those towns).
In general the food was pretty simple and at most paladares it followed a pretty predictable formula: a simple salad of tomato, cucumber, and cabbage to start; a choice of meat for your main; a family-style side of rice and black beans served either separately or mixed together in a combo called congri or moros y cristianos (get it?). Sometimes there would be tostones (savory mashed and fried plantains), a few pieces of stewed yucca, and fruit for dessert.
What differentiated a good meal from an OK meal for the most part was the quality of the meat and the beans (quality of the ingredients and the preparation). Typical meat/protein choices are 1) chicken thigh/leg, 2) grilled or fried fillet of some type of white fish, 3) stewed lamb, 4) lobster. Sometimes you’ll see lamb and shrimp. Lobster ended up being the joke of the trip though because of how readily available and relatively inexpensive lobster was. I guess it was the season, because it was on virtually every menu and a large lobster tail cost the same as a chicken thigh/leg. (For the record, I don’t eat seafood, so I was the loser eating the chicken thigh.) There is tons of pork, but non-pork eaters will be fine. For vegetarians though…I have no idea what you do. I guess hang on to those granola bars.
Restaurant Recommendations
So I guess, to sum it up, don’t expect the type of Cuban food you get in the US, but also don’t despair. We ate at many places, and of those I’d say while in Havana you should check out:
La Guarida — Best meal we had in Cuba. Inventive menu in a fun, kitschy-trendy-yet-homey space on the third floor of an otherwise abandoned building in Havana Centro. The taco appetizer was a stand out. Actually, order as much as is socially acceptable, this is a worthy splurge meal (and as splurges go, it’s pretty reasonable, at least for those of us conditioned by San Francisco prices…we had three courses and drinks for under $50pp). Make sure you get a reservation, this place appears to be packed every night of the week. Plus apparently this is where Jay-Z and Beyoncé went when they were in town, and we spotted Sam Rockwell and Leslie Bibb while we were there, so I think we’re basically famous by association, and you will be too. Oh and don’t miss the bar up the separate back spiral staircase from the third floor to the roof for a pre-dinner drink or post-dinner nightcap.
Nao — Since we didn’t have a reservation we had to sit in the uninspiring indoor dining area, so book ahead for a table in the charming alley. The food is good, though it errs on the side of being a bit unidimensional and fried. Along those lines, if you’re on a ropa vieja quest, I recommend trying it’s cousin, vaca frita, here. The appetizers are huge and the service, while lovely, was slow (though that is not unusual in Cuba generally, where the pace is more relaxed than what us US-city-folk are accustomed to).
Cañonazo — We strolled the ramparts one evening to watch the sun set over Old Havana and then headed to this place for dinner. The atmosphere was lively, with covered outdoor seating and live music — it was like a little reminder that we were in the Caribbean. The food was much more flavorful than most places we ate, with some delicious saucy pineapple and onion pork and chicken dishes and of course the ever present grilled lobster. The service was terrific, the black beans bottomless, and there was a family of three fluffy white chickens on parade, which was entertaining.
Tien Tan — There’s always a point I hit in any vacation where I just can’t eat another bite of *insert local cuisine here.* And (unless I’m traveling in Asia) that’s the point at which I crave Asian food. Luckily, Havana has a Barrio Chino. Less luckily, apparently almost no Chinese people actually live there anymore (most fled after the Triumph of the Revolution, which is how Cubans refer to 1959). Tien Tan is, however, one of the few restaurants that still has a Chinese chef. The food is pretty good, but the dumplings are excellent, especially when in a state of desperation. We ate on the outdoor patio, which was just far enough off the garage-strewn main drags of Barrio Chino (see also: most of Havana) to be pleasant.
Coppelia — It’s important to have your mind blown as regularly as possible while in Cuba, and there are plenty of things that will do it if you’re a typical capitalist-American living in 2016. A stop by the Coppelia ice cream parlor in Parque Coppelia on Avenida 23 and Calle L in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana is one of them. There are several Coppelia’s but try to make time to visit this open air one that looks frozen in time. It’s also frozen in price; this outpost caters to locals. A security guard stopped us on our way to get in line to be sure we had pesos on us (not CUCs…more on money in my earlier post). We were directed by another guard to a line at the giant counter. The menu on the way in had listed the day’s flavors: vanilla. So we ordered a float and a sundae and topped the latter with a shake and squeeze from the bottles of cookie crumbles and honey sitting along the bar that serve as the (only) topping options. The grand total was 6 pesos, the equivalent of $0.24. The ice cream was good, but the feeling that we had gone back in time was even better. More on Coppelia’s historical significance here.
Cake — This isn’t so much a restaurant as an encouragement to be spontaneous. We were in Havana on New Year’s Eve, and all day we’d seen people scurrying around with giant cakes. By 4pm we figured this must be a New Year’s tradition. We’d already picked up a bottle of Havana Club for our NYE pre-party, and just then we passed four handwritten signs that proclaimed CAKE by the side of the road. We darted across the intersection, and popped into a tiny bakery that was exclusively selling fancy New Year’s cakes. The proprietor pointed out his favorite, tres leches, and 5 CUCs later, we had our pregame snack. It was delicious. But just as fun was knowing that we were having a taste of what was tradition for Cubans in Havana (though to be fair I’m guessing they wait until after dinner).
We also heard great things about: Dona Eutimia, L’Atelier, and Cafe Laurent. But since we didn’t make it to any of those places, no insights here.
A note on breakfast: we stayed in casa particulares, which are essentially b&b’s or homestays, thoughout our trip, including while in Havana. Breakfast came included in our stays, so we never ventured out for that meal. Typical breakfast was a few slices of fruit, bread, cheese, fresh juice, coffee, and eggs made to order. Nothing fancy, but reliably pretty delicious.
