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What's the food like in Cuba, you ask? Terrible, generally. I lost over 5 pounds in my 10-day trip this May. But the good news is that there is a light on the horizon for tourists and Cubans-alike. I can't speak for the food scene before my first trip three years ago, but I immediately noticed that food (as with many other basic comforts like transportation and lodging) had made huge leaps forward from my first trip to Cuba in 2007. Obviously the impact of tourism and the marked economic gains made just over three years (more oil is flowing thanks to Cuba and Venezuela's Oil for Doctors program, there are more cars, houses look in better shape, people are better dressed, no more power brown-outs or black-outs) means that for Cubans and tourists alike, the food has come a long, long way. (This is a cross-post from my blog at www.foodgirl.ca but I'll post the follow-ups here too!) |
First I'll address the most obvious question: How can a place with such great urban organic farming have such poor food choices on the plate? As with most things in Cuba, it's complicated. The urban organic farm produce is grown for Cubans, not tourists. Hotels and restaurants operate in the "tourism" industry and must therefore import the food because there's not enough locally produced food at this point to supply the tourism industry's needs. It would put the food security of the Cuban nationals at risk and that's not acceptable. On my trip in 2007, I spoke at length with a chef at a major hotel chain in Varadero and he was the one who explained this to me. "Cubans are used to egg shortages," he said. "Tourists are not." Locally produced food is also seasonal in Cuba, so those fresh tomatoes and oranges on the buffet, even, are imports if you are holidaying in Cuba when its not tomato or orange season. Cuban nationals have first dibs on the great organic produce grown on the organoponicos, and that's the way it should be. There's also the cultural barrier to having fresh food available to us visitors. (Remember that the worst part of Cuba's Special Period is still pretty fresh in most Cubans' mind. Almost overnight in the early 1990s, their daily caloric intake dropped by one-third and Cubans, on average, dropped 25 pounds.) Fresh veggies and vegetable-based dishes are just not considered "food" by Cubans yet. They're in love with fried, stewed or heavily cooked meats, with a side of white rice or rice and beans (cangrejo). The slice of cucumber, shredded cabbage and / or slice of tomato is merely a garnish. We ate "relatively" well at the Hotel Nacional, but for the first few meals there I could see in the faces of my travelling companions that they were not expecting the food to be as bland, monotonous or just plain as unhealthy (this is a refined carb-lovin', fried-food-lovin', meat-eating culture and even 50 years of food rationing hasn't been able to break the cycle of heavy, fattening food in Cuba). The bulk of our meals were eaten at the Hotel Nacional, as lunch and dinner were included in our room rates. I didn't take any photos of the food or the dining hall. Sorry. It just didn't occur to me at the time. 
Memorable Meal #1: One of the best meals occurred at Hotel La Granjita in Santa Clara, Cuba. We arrived at this resort-hotel late (La Granjita means "the farm" but it was more like a resort hotel with funky hut-like hotel rooms...in fact, it was built similar to many of the Cubanacan hotels I have stayed at previously), tired from a long day of looking at farms, and a day on the bus. Dinner wasn't anything fancy, but the salad plate was actually an enormous plate of shredded cabbage, beets, lettuce, tomatoes and cukes. Then I ordered the whitefish in a creole sauce, and the fish was really quite lovely and delicate in the tomato-y sauce. I believe I even sensed a piece of basil in there. The sides were white rice and baby potatoes. We splurged on a bottle of Chilean Concho y Toro Carmenere red wine and it tasted like manna from heaven. I was already rather tired of the usual beverage selection of Rum and Coke (with lime = the Cuba Libre); very fizzy, slightly bitter lagers (Cristal is the lighter, Bucanero is the stronger, but both taste virtually the same); and mojitos (sugar, rum, mint and soda water). The meal was included in our room, so I don't have the price breakdown of the entrees etc, but the bottle of wine was $20 CUC and everything on the menu seemed very reasonably priced. In part 2, I'll tell you about my rooftop patio splurge in Old Havana at the Hotel Ambos Mundos. Here, I encountered the most hysterically funny menu translations I've ever seen. But the food was good. In part 3, I'll tell you about the best Cuban meal I didn't have, but a number of the people in my group were lucky enough to have. On a day that I was scheduled to visit the rather famous Havana Vivero Alamar organoponico, they took a trip to an eco-resort and biosphere reserve 51 km from Havana. At Las Terraces, they ate at arguably Cuba's best and most interesting restaurant, El Romero (Rosemary) the 36-seat eco-vegetarian restaurant run by revolutionary Cuban chef (and Slow Food member), Tito Nuñez. |
