Running a Restaurant in Havana

Looking back at another time period on the island.

In 2015, I was on assignment in Havana for New York Magazine weeks after then President Barack Obama normalized relations between the United States and Cuba after 54 years. I went so quickly that it was still somewhat of a legal gray area for an American to travel there. I had to fly from Peru, via Panama, and immigration officials on both sides were quite confused on how the process was supposed to play out. When I did eventually enter the city during that first month, what I found more than anything else, despite all of the inefficiencies and desperation, was hope.

In the years since, much of that hope has dissipated. First, Donald Trump, when elected, reversed most of the policy changes that were enacted under Obama. When Joe Biden was elected, he restored some of Obama’s policies, though not all, and diplomatic ties have been stuck in limbo for years since. Long-time Cuban ally Venezuela, dealing with its own issues, slashed fuel shipments by half this year, making the island’s stability has been more fragile than ever. In the past few weeks the power grid has completely collapsed and there are severe shortages of food and water.

This story was written for the old New Worlder site in 2015, the very first story published there. It reveals many broken promises, closed restaurants and crushed dreams. Still, it felt like a starting point then, even if it did go off the rails. While Cuba only seems to be an issue on the minds of Americans when the voters of South Florida are needed to sway an election, the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe there and our role in it cannot be ignored.

The Havana malecón. Photo: Nicholas Gill.

I

We heard there might be flour so we left immediately.

To begin any conversation of food in Cuba, you must first discuss of the lack of it. Especially when speaking of running a restaurant.

Food is rationed and tubers and beans dominate state-run farms, so finding additional ingredients beyond the few that are readily available can be problematic. Most other products, even something as seemingly basic as a whole chicken, are classified as luxury items, are purchased with a separate currency, and out of reach of most of the Cuban population. Even for those with money to pay, like a restaurant, there is no consistent access.

OtraManera is probably the best restaurant Havana, Cuba has seen in decades. It’s owned by Cuban born Amy Torralbas and Spanish born Álvaro Diez and is set up in a minimalist 50’s style ranch house of Torralbas’ family in the Miramar neighborhood. It happens to have already been a paladar at one time.

Diez, a sommelier, studied at the Universidad de Girona and worked in a few great Spanish restaurants. He recruited a Spanish chef friend to help design a farm to table menu that could realistically be executed in Havana, though Dayron Ávila, who cooked in Buenos Aires for many years, runs the kitchen full time. In two separate meals I had dishes like rabbit escabeche, ceviche and slow cooked pork loin with flavors and plating as beautiful as any great Miami restaurant and with an even worldlier atmosphere. What I immediately learned, however, is that sourcing ingredients takes up all of their time.

“We had every intention of baking our own bread, but it was impossible,” Diez tells me. Wheat is impossible to find and the bread they can get is limited to the uniform hamburger style buns that are used for everything in Havana, from street food to fine dining restaurants.

Rather than seeking out unique produce, they spend their days tracking down basic supplies, like milk, eggs, flour, and club soda. This complication has led to an underground world of buyers. Every paladar in Havana has at least one and they all know each other because they see each other so often.

“We all help each other,” says Rodrigo Martinez, an accountant from Spain that Diez brought over to help them with logistics for a few months. “We’re all just driving around to different places and so someone might say at this place I found butter and we go straight there.”

It’s 8am and the call for flour comes from the buyer from El Cocinero. He’s at a juice stand around the corner so I ride over with Torralbas and Martinez in their Soviet-era Lada, a car so old and rickety that the gas meter just spins in circles as we go as if it’s just blowing in the wind.

The guy from El Cocinero tells us it’s at a state run depot, but when we get there they tell us they don’t have any. “They might have some, but they’re just not saying,” says Martinez. “We can go back a few hours later and speak with someone else and they’ll have it. It’s not that they got an order in, it’s just how it works.”

Arrivals of certain products are a matter of public concern. When there is an egg delivery word spreads like wildfire and nearly everyone in Vedado and Miramar rushes to the scene. It’s an eerie scene where everyone you see in the street, walking or on bikes, is carrying a carton of eggs, as if a hurricane was about to hit.

We make various stops. At a state run liquor store we explore the wine selection, which is not only limited, but also expensive. “The same wine that costs five Euros in Spain costs 26 Euros here,” says Martinez. They have Schweppes tonic in stock and Torralbas and Martinez buy everything they have, which was only a few cases. Gin and tonics are a specialty of the bar at OtraManera, but tonic is almost impossible to find usually. You can never know how long it will be there so you have to stock up.

“This is the closest thing we have to a real market here,” says Torralbas, when we enter the Vedado market. It’s state run, but still it’s all organic. Each farm has a small stand with, for the most part, the same products. There are bananas, pineapples, beets, onions and cucumbers. The colors are bright and they look as good as any bananas, pineapples, beets, onions and cucumbers I’ve seen anywhere else. Prices are listed on wooden boards and are inexpensive enough that practically anyone can afford them. Sourcing fruits or vegetables beyond these, however, is where additional layers of complications arise.

A now closed paladar around the corner from Cuba’s capitol building. Photo: Nicholas Gill.

II

Restaurants in Havana are divided into two primary categories: State-run or paladares. State-run restaurants used to be what every restaurant was, but, in efforts to lift Cuba’s ailing economy, this has  gradually changed. In 1993, the Cuban government authorized self-employment, which included privately owned paladares. In 2011, several dozen state-run restaurants transitioned into employee-run cooperatives. In 2014, some 9,000 state-run restaurants were made available to the private sector. While the government will still own the land, they are getting out of the restaurant business. Private citizens can now buy these restaurants.

Despite dominating the landscape, state-run restaurants have a reputation of poor quality. Most are not run by chefs, or someone who has ever been a cook of any sort, but by someone who has a friend in the government. Sometimes they are overpriced. Sometimes they are set in landmark settings. While I can appreciate the architecture and setting of some state-run establishments, few offer anything other than a mediocre meal, such as the highly touted El Ajibe’s roasted chicken, which I was served dried out.

That brings us to paladares, where most growth in the Cuban restaurant industry has occurred over the past 25 years. Many of the original paladares that opened in the 1990s didn’t take off or were put out of business, though rules have gradually loosened, giving restaurateurs more flexibility. While some state-run restaurants list prices in Cuban pesos so that some Cubans are able to afford to eat there, all paladares list prices in the convertible peso, or CUC, a currency reserved for luxury items, used primarily by tourists and wealthy Cubans. Rules stipulated that these mostly family run restaurants, often in someone’s home, can only have a maximum of 50 seats and could only serve certain products from state-run suppliers. Still, paladares are thriving amidst Cuba’s biggest tourist boom in decades, though it might not last.

In the last four years more than 400 paladares have opened in Havana alone and there are an estimated 1,700 around the country. In October of 2016, the Cuban government froze the issuance of new licenses for restaurants and began enforcing stricter regulations. For instance, restaurants are now required to provide receipts for everything they serve, ensuring that they don’t do anything illegal. While the government allows them to exist, it is as if they don’t want them to be too successful.