Paladares and a spaceship of communist ice cream
Havana is not the first place one would think of for good food. Still, it’s the best culinary destination in the whole of Cuba and the best opportunity to sample traditional cooking. Spoilers: it’s mostly pork, beans, plantains, and yucca.
Standards are comparable to mid-range restaurants in Western Europe…provided one sticks to the tourist restaurants and eschews resort food. Normally, I avoid tourist restaurants but I haven’t come across a locally-oriented restaurant in Havana that’s worth recommending. Choice ingredients and skillful technique are unfortunately priced out of range for the vast majority of Cubans.
I assume that you’re not planning to go to Cuba to eat French, Italian, Spanish, or American food, so I’ve focused on the unique Havana experiences in this article.
The vicissitudes of eating out in Cuba
Havana’s culinary scene has gone through ups and downs. It was mostly forgotten by the world after the Cuban revolution in 1959. Restaurants became state-run. It became a challenge to find somewhere that would accept foreigners, let alone with good food.
When Cuba opened up for tourism in the 1990s during the “special period” (período especial; tough economic times), the government allowed private enterprise in the form of paladares: family-run restaurants out of their own homes. That marked the renaissance of Cuban dining. Today, the range, quality, and ambience of paladares exceeds that of government-run food establishments. They are indistinguishable from regular restaurants elsewhere in the world, other than the discreet home residence beyond the kitchen.
The second challenge to deal with is the availability of ingredients. Especially imported ones that upscale restaurants advertise like olive oil and squid ink. The US trade embargo has made it difficult to secure a consistent and affordable supply chain. Tourists complain of how often most items on the menu are not available. I say Cuban chefs have to improvise like nowhere else in the world in the face of unstable supply issues. They have to be creative about substitutions and figuring out how to maximize the ingredients they have on hand.
A more recent challenge affects tourists as much as Cubans: currency. Since 2021, Cuba’s inflation rate has run amok at 70%. Before 2021, Cuba had two currencies: peso (CUP) and convertible peso (CUC). 1 CUC is exactly 1 US dollar and it was what (most) tourists used and restaurant menus were priced with. Now, there is just CUP, whose value continues to plummet against global currencies each day. Virtually all prices are quoted in CUP now and tourists have to use them for everyday purchases (with some exceptions). Until the currency stabilizes, you’re better off exchanging for pesos in the black market than at the bank or ATM. Otherwise, you’ll be wondering why you just paid 8.00 € for a slice of mediocre pizza. The street rate is two to three times better than the official one.
