Puttin' on the Ritz!!!

If there was ever any doubt in my mind that I am having an excellent stay in this beautiful country, the past two days have erased said doubt away completely. Last night, I came back from using the internet at the Melia Cohiba hotel around 6:30, and my group had already eaten dinner at 6 and left to go to a club with our waitress, Johanka, so nobody was in the restaurant. (Staff and guests aren’t supposed to hang out outside of ANAP, so this was all done covertly – operation “have fun with our friends from the kitchen” had commenced before my arrival!).

When I entered the restaurant, Pablito, Camilo and Albertico (one of the bartenders for the in-ANAP bar who was taking Johanka’s place that night) all came over like my three fairy godfathers and asked me how my day was, said they would bring dinner out right away, and did I know how to get to the café where everyone was going dancing?? I said I had forgotten how to get there, and immediately Albertico offered to drop me off. It was incredible - I felt like such a well-taken-care-of princess!

I ate dinner, dropped my plates off in the kitchen to be washed, and then went to go get ready, but by the time I was ready to leave, I realized that it was 7:30, and the ladies were coming back at 9, so it wouldn’t be worth it to head out. I wasn’t really bummed – I love spending nights in the house – but I didn’t really have anything to do, so I hung out in the kitchen and asked if I could do anything to help. That was the best question I have ever asked thus far this semester, in or out of class!

I ended up playing waitress for the night, bringing out food to a late-night diner/guest, and setting the table for the next morning’s breakfast (Camilo came out and corrected most of my work). I got to fetch things around the restaurant for Pablito and clean up the tabels, and it made me feel so good because I felt like I was cleaning up my house, which I actually miss a lot (it’s so weird, but I miss ironing and washing dishes and such. Mom and Dad, please take note – I DID say this at one point in my life).

Tonight, we ended up going out to eat at a paladar, which is basically a really fancy and expensive Cuban restaurant. Usually, paladars don’t have certain dishes when you ask for them off the menu (especially with the food shortages from the hurricane), but this paladar was EXTRA special! It’s called la Guarida, and it’s located in the apartment where the famous Cuban movie Fresa y Chocolate was filmed!!! It was so weird to recognize the rooms from scenes in the movie!!!

Most importantly, however: THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS!!!!! They had everything on the menu, which included everything from rabbit with peppers and avocado to full-fledged salads (we’re talking REAL tomatoes here, with LETTUCE and fancy dressing and cucumber and cabbage!!!!), in addition to roasted chicken, snapper, salmon, octopus, and grouper. I ordered a girly drink called a Mary-something (rum with pineapple juice, grenadine (!), and maraschino sauce in a very cosmopolitan glass!), and got the octopus salad, in addition to this AMAZING spinach crepe concoction with an amazing vinaigrette sauce and chicken on the inside. MMMM! It was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted – seriously!

Let’s provide a little background to the Cuban dining out experience. Most Cuban eateries, even the nice ones, are [attempts] at imitations of fine restaurants in Europe or the US. Often they are up three flights of stairs, in what could probably be someone’s back porch or living room (and most likely once was). The food is delicious, but you could probably encounter a better version of the same food (lasagna, which was delish, but lacking pasta, salads made of basically cabbage chopped into cole slaw pieces and cucumbers, fried chicken) back in the US.

La Guarida was the closest I have seen to a “fine dining” establishment, and could most likely hold its own as a US, culinarily-innovative institution. I wanted to cry when I tasted how delicious the spinach was, and ate REAL tomatoes with REAL onions and REAL FRESH BASIL LEAVES (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and a DELICIOUS sauce with my octopus salad (and REAL lettuce!). You have no idea how much my heart was so happy just to have that brief moment of ecstasy in which I was reminded of the luxury of having every type of food available at any given time. The octopus salad I ordered made me think so much of home, of my grandfather and seafood salad at Christmas Eve dinner, where the family gathers around, and in Italian tradition, eats a huge seafood meal and then opens presents. Food to me is a key element of my existence, and eating really good food tonight really reminded me of home and family, as I can connect most of my experiences being with my extended family involving meals of some kind (going to parties and sitting around the sweet table, commenting on someone’s amazing recipe for a pasta dish, looking at huge Thanksgiving turkey(s) or even ordering pizza and sitting around the kitchen table, talking late into the night over cups of coffee about politics, the kids, plans for vacation, or engagements to be married). I always associate good food around a big table with my family, and the moments of sharing life and the goings-on of the day with one another. It was a bittersweet moment of recognition, but I was nonetheless made extremely content by my meal.

I even got the chance to order chamomile tea (te de manzanilla), which was amazing, mostly due to the fact that it is not as available in Cuba (available meaning offered everywhere at a low price) as coffee is. The experience is one we will hopefully be repeating on Thanksgiving and one I will most certainly not forget any time soon. One can’t often be too picky when the only thing one can afford is rice and beans and maybe some veggies from the agro (maybe some pork or chicken, too), and when the market runs out, there’s not really much you can do but resolver by just making do with what you have.

In the Special Period (the time during the early 90s where Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin), there were stories of eating everything possible to stay alive. To think of all the luxury I just enjoyed – it would never be available to your average Cuban. Tonight, as I was heading home with my friends, we hailed a maquina by the Malecon to get us back to ANAP. The driver was a former sailor who was a rich Cuban, and he didn’t even charge us for taking us home. I think it had something to do with the fact that we had a really good convo on the way back, and he outwardly stated that he was one of the few Cubans who could afford to not accept the money we offered him. I just can’t believe the system I’m in, and how biased it is; although it pledges undying loyalty to socialism, it is a deformed Russian socialism that is reproduced constantly and incorrectly. He said that is only Cuba had gone with Che’s socialism, it would have been fine.

I’m not so sure about that, but what I do know is that it’s much easier to be able to say that and buy yourself a nice gourmet pizza at the end of the day than it is to say that and be going hungry, because you only make $15 every month and can’t afford to pick up that tab.