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Food & Drink

Havin’ a good time

Hard times are gone and a new green wave hits Havana and its food culture

After languishing for decades in what seemed like an eternal 1950s time warp, Havana is changing big time, and that includes the food scene.

The economically difficult "special period," which began in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet empire, is now over. The evidence is both anecdotal, as demonstrated by all the flashy new Fiats and Volkswagen Golfs on Havana streets, and official: At this year’s International Women’s Day events, an aging but articulate Fidel Castro announced the end of the special period and the beginning of a new era of growth.

Before the collapse of the Soviet empire, much of Cuba’s food supply came from Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc. The collapse of the system that drove much of Cuba’s economy (exporting sugar; importing food, oil and durable goods in return) meant an instant diet for most Cubans. One UN report observed that the average caloric intake for Cubans dropped from 3,000 calories a day to 1,900. That’s like skipping a meal every day. For years.

The ensuing shortage of oil, farm machinery parts, pesticides and fertilizers meant even local food supplies from big state-run farms dried up, adding to the shortages of imported food. Things got pretty tough, literally. According to Bill McKibben, writing in the April issue of Harper’s , one TV cooking show urged Cubans to fry up "steaks" made from grapefruit peels covered in bread crumbs. Mmmm, good.

But you needn’t worry about tackling grapefruit-peel steaks if you visit Havana today. Cuba’s open-arm policy toward tourism, one of the main strategies responsible for pulling the country out of its dire special period (growth in tourism averaged 10 per cent a year in the ’90s), has also been driving an explosion, or a least a mini-burst, of great new eateries.

This new wave is kind of unexpected, given that most of Havana’s restaurants are still state-controlled, which, in the past always translated to indifferent food and service. But like the rest of Cuba’s weird politics, the restaurant scene is complex, even contradictory, and tough for an outsider to figure out.

Recently, the three big state-owned tourism companies, Cubanacan, Gran Caribe and Isla Azul, which together control 30,000 of 42,000 hotel rooms in the country, were merged when the tourism ministry decided to get a little closer to the big tourist bucks.

That meant a lot of the previously autonomously-run operations, like the Floridita and Bodeguita del Medio bars – must-see daiquiri and mojito stops for tourists trying to find the long-gone Havana of Ernest Hemingway – were stripped from the likes of Gran Caribe and taken over directly by government. That includes the famous Tropicana nightclub and its girlie shows as well.

How all this will shake out remains to be seen, but there are still a lot of places in Havana where the old adage "you get what you pay for" gets flipped on its head. Case in point: the grand old Hotel Nacional de Cuba, which is operated by the state-owned Gran Caribe. Despite its five-star rating (one wonders by whom) and tremendous atmosphere, this 1930s art deco beauty, which has hosted everyone from Winston Churchill to Mafioso gangsters, still delivers watery drinks, indifferent service and a pretty bland food for top dollar.

Still, someone in the tourism ministry seems to have gotten the picture that government-run doesn’t have to leave a bad taste in our mouth. For instance, only a block from the Hotel Nacional, the odd brick-and-beam Tudor-style El Conejito (the rabbit), specializes in, you guessed it, delicious rabbit dishes for only about $7 for an entrée. And state-run sweet shops serve some of the finest flan you’ll sink a spoon into for a mere 50 cents, and serves it promptly.

On the other hand, privately run restaurants are no guarantee either. Since 1995, visitors and locals alike have sought out dining alternatives in state-licensed paladares . These are family-run places that, strictly speaking, should only have seating for 12 people and serve only pork, chicken or fish dishes.

The wrong-headed but romantic notion that you are dining secretly or illicitly in a Cuban family’s home (these places often have no signs) compounded by misleading guide books and touts would have you believe that if you hit a paladare , you’ll be in homemade food heaven. Take that with a grain of salt. Some paladares can be just as disappointing and over-priced as state-run restaurants.

The rule is there are no rules, for you can also find tremendous value at paladares . Case in point: Le Chansonnier, housed in a lovely colonial mansion filled with antiques and fresh flowers. It offers sophisticated French-style cuisine that nicely flouts the state regulations and averages only about $10 per entrée. Don’t be afraid to try one of Le Chansonnier’s house specialties – gorgeous fresh garden salads, which, in a stroke of irony, are welcome offspring of the lean special period.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then we all might be very glad indeed for the hardship of that period that drove Cubans to start the thousands of organopónicos – small, super-productive organic gardens – now dotting the countryside and filling a country once prone to a dearth of fresh food crops with delicious fruits and vegetables.

Agricultural experts from all over the world are now journeying to Cuba to see how these amazingly productive plots of land are playing a crucial role in topping up Cuba’s food supply, both in quality and quantity.

The shortage of pesticides and fertilizers during the special period, coupled with the copious amounts of free education Cuba has lavished on its people – in this case, agricultural training – have paid off in green spades, giving experts a good idea of how we all could grow food with minimal oil, fertilizers and pesticides.

With the price of oil rumoured to soon hit $100+ per barrel and the UN releasing last week its monumental Millennium Ecosytem Assessment Synthesis Report (www.maweb.org), which cites, among other grave concerns, the unsustainable damage we humans are wreaking to 60 per cent of the world’s ecosystems – including the huge overuse of fertilizers – Cuba may well end up as a role model in more ways than one.

Glenda Bartosh is an award winning freelance writer who highly recommends the article "The Cuba diet: What will you be eating when the revolution comes?" by Bill McKibben in the April issue of Harper’s Magazine.