Cuban Food, Musically Speaking
By Bill 2 comments“And how was the food?”
Roughly thirty seconds into just about every conversation I had upon my return from a 10 day trip to Cuba in April came that question. My friends know I like to eat well regardless of whether or not I’m travelling, so a query about Cuban cuisine wasn’t surprising. No, the suprise was the look on the face of whomever had asked the question when I responded, “Really not very good.”
By far, the best street food available there happened to be my favorite sandwich: ham and cheese. On one memorable day that ended at the famed Tropicana, by showtime, I had eaten my first in the morning from a peso store on busy Obispo Street, the second at noon at a cafe before a meeting with the garrulous Lazara Herrera, Directra of the country’s Documentary Film Office. And the third? Can’t remember. Chalk it up to amnesia brought on by Havana Club rum and cigars, a daily hazard. But that was all I had to eat that day and I was perfectly content. Slightly more formal meals were taken at a couple of paladares, which are private homes licensed to sell to a limited number of tourists. These are generally good and authentic experiences, you are in someones home, but none of your fellow diners are Cuban. They could never afford it. Although a simple dinner for three is the equivalent of twenty-five U.S. dollars, that’s almost twice the average monthly salary of an ordinary Cuban. Do the math.
But the best meal I ate In Cuba was at the table of my friend Peter Loman and his family in Santiago de Cuba, a dinner cooked with love for myself and my fellow gringo amigo and musician, Mike Davison. As the omnipresent travelling food yappers Andrew Zimmern, Anthony Bourdain and others that overpopulate cable television have told us countless times, the best way to gain purchase of an understanding of a people and her culture is through the food. (And they’re right even though a little didactic and a bit haughty for my taste. I mean, once is enough dudes.) And when you reverse engineer the meal we dined on of pork steak, brown beans and rice, steamed potatoes, malanga fritters, plantains, cucumber and tomato salad, and flan, you start to get a picture of what the average Cuban and their $15 a month income can buy and get to the table. On a good day.
It would have been impolite to ask Peter’s beautiful wife Nydia about the marketing, but it wasn’t hard to deduce that, unless you have a garden of your own, or a black market contact, or you are politically connected, you are stuck buying what is available at the government store. The pork steak and everything else was delicious, but as she shopped for the special dinner to honor her guests that day, my good guess is that she didn’t necessarily have a choice about the main course. “What will it be Senora Loman? Pork steak, pork steak or pork steak?” I heard a recent rumour out of Havana that by the end of the year there will be no more potatoes available for ration. Who really knows? But for one thing I am certain, the Lomans made certain their visitors left well fed, and I also believe they stretched some to make it happen.
But if music was food, Cubans would have an obesity problem bigger than the U.S. They can’t get enough. They gorge on it. It’s everywhere, day and night, and it intersects with every other aspect of their lives. I really believe it inoculates them from the drearier reality that they have to deal with on a daily basis, although from the outside, my experience with Cubans revealed an upbeat, proud and happy people. (With a cop on every corner and a 50 year history of government spies, to show open disdain for the Castro brothers and their regime would not be prudent.) And like everything in Cuba, politics is tightly woven into the the musical fabric as well as pork steaks at the government store. It is when music and politics collide that things can get dicey.
One of those artists willing to call out the Cuban government with regard to the music of protest is Carlos Varela, a singer- song writer who is currently living in the states. Billed as a “Cuban Rock Star” he’ll be in Washington tomorrow for a cultural discussion on politics and music with Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist and author of The Last Dance In Cuba, and Tim Golden a writer with the New York Times Magazine. Golden and Robinson are old Cuba hands and after the discussion, which is being co-sponsored by the Center for Democracy in the Americas and the New America Foundation, Varela will perform a selection of his tunes. It should be a good and timely session.
The aforementioned Dr. Mike Davison, (Liltingly and lovingly called dah-VEE-sohn by Lydia Loman) and I will be heading to D.C. for the event and I’ll be writing about it in the coming days. Really jacked up for it.
So now, go make a jamon y queso sandwich and listen to some Carlos Varela on You Tube.
Out.
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Comments (2)
mike davison
An awesome blog! Sincerely, Mike Dah-VEE-Sohn (: Good night, and good food! (travels, too!) [Reply]
Kurt Spessard
Word Man, thanks for creating such vivid pictures of the Cuban expierence! Perfect escape as I watch the snow increase beyond the 8″ mark through this “wintry” night. Strangely craving pork now….. Thanks, “Chet” [Reply]