Grazing in the Cuban sunshine
January 17, 2007
Susan Sampson
GUARDALAVACA, CUBA–You don't go to Cuba for the food. Never mind the
posh hotel, the Cubans have to work with what they've got. This is not a
land of plenty.
It is past midnight. My family of four has arrived, starving, after a
delayed flight. At the hotel's late-night restaurant, dull ham and
cheese is the replacement for the classic Cubano sandwich I had been
hoping for. There is no sign of this Cuban "snack," a fistful of roast
pork, ham, cheese and pickles crammed into a bun.
In the week to follow, the hotel proves a strange blend of luxury and
scarcity. Score: lettuce, none; whole hogs, one. Palms are laden with
coconuts, which the gardeners are willing to chop down to order as they
go about their business pampering the spectacular landscape. The path to
the beach is lined with decorative houseplants grown to monstrous
proportions. The sound of the emerald waters slapping the sand on Playa
Esmeralda is an antidote for a perpetual towel shortage. Servers are
slow and disorganized. Complainers, however, can throw themselves into a
bottomless pit of rum.
The Sol Rio de Luna y Mares – a four-star, double hotel complex – is an
hour away from the nearest city, Holguin, in the hilly southeast of the
Caribbean's largest country. Cuba is still recovering from the economic
blows of the last decade, when the loss of billions in subsidies from
the Soviet Union led to a severe recession. There is not much in the shops.
What Cuban resort cooks lack in variety, they make up for in quantity at
the Sol Rio's six restaurants.
The buffet reaches its culinary height on Christmas Eve. One table is
laden with lobsters and shrimp. On another, roast pork falls into shreds
underneath perfect crackling. Turkey and stuffing have been promised,
but the turkey sign points to leathery Beef Wellington in a soggy crust.
Curiously, over the next three days, turkey cutlets start to appear and
a whole bird is roasted by the pool. One suspects thawing times proved a
problem.
Who cares? Pork is the real Cuban festive food. One day on the beach,
they literally go whole hog. And we're not talking suckling pig. This
big animal is roasted low-tech over hot coals. One fellow's sole job is
to sit in a rickety chair and turn the spit for hours. He looks bored.
(Or perhaps boared?) My 11-year-old is fascinated by the corpse. "Is
that a real pig or just a piece of meat in the shape of a pig?" she asks.
Pork also comes in fried chunks. Though overdone by our standards, the
dish is strangely delicious. That's not the case for chicken bits fried
to punishing crunchiness. Overdoing it seems to be standard. Thin beef
and pork cutlets are stubbornly cooked to shoe leather despite being
grilled (or more accurately, griddled) to order.
It's wiser to opt for the fish: purplish black tuna steaks, bassa,
salmon fillets. Then there are the piles of shrimp, heads intact. With
their beady black eyes and long antennae, they look like bugs on a
plate. But the flesh is so nutty and sweet.
You'll have to work for your shrimp dinner, though. Twist off the head
and get squirted. Wrestle with the thin, hard-to-peel shell. The shrimpy
scent will cling to your fingers for hours, despite soap and water.
Diehards say the heads add flavour to the shrimp and should be sucked
clean. I'll agree with the former, pass on the latter.
Among the appetizers and salads, dry cured ham, chorizo and slices of
mild cheese are set out. Fresh sausages, especially the pork and onion,
are tasty choices at breakfast and dinner times. The charcuterie is
supplemented by vinegary pickles and pickled onions. Lively cucumbers
appear a couple of days, then disappear.
There's no sign of any lettuce. We must content ourselves with salads
tossed with pale, almost white, shaved cabbage. Sometimes bell peppers
are tossed into the mix. One day, we spy some little piquant pickled
peppers. But this is an anomaly. Cuban cuisine is not spicy, bucking the
trend in the Caribbean. We laugh about the hot sauce incident: my
husband asks for some hot sauce; the server shakes her head and offers
black pepper.
Potatoes make an appearance daily as fries. The occasional mashies are
obviously powdered; they are reincarnated as a frightening soup.
Luckily, there are starchy, dense and satisfying alternatives: The
boniato is a beige sweet potato that's less moist and sweet than our
common orange ones. The yuca has fluffy, creamy flesh; otherwise known
as cassava or tapioca root, it is grown locally.
The daily menu offers few surprises. You expect the rice and beans,
omelets, pastas, flans, tropical fruit. (Staff fail to core the
pineapples, an unpleasant habit.) The butter is very fresh, but there is
no whipped cream. There is ice cream. But the tubs are kept on a bed of
ice, rather than in freezer cases. They are thin, and quickly soften to
a sodden mess in the centre and crystallize at the edges. The cook
bringing out a fresh batch generates excitement, especially in the
younger contingent. They hurry to scoop before the tropical heat gets to
it. The ice cream comes in vanilla, caramel, guava, coconut and chocolate.
The chocolate ice cream is a favourite, probably because guests are
suffering from cocoa withdrawal. Chocolate does make an appearance in
small quantities, as sprinkles on little sponge cakes or as pale
chocolate milk in the morning. Bananas, however, make a more suitable
local dessert. The banana plantations around here stretch for acres.
Attracted by the fire raging in the pan at the flambé station, diners
line up for buttered, caramelized bananas and rum. Pineapples and guavas
get the flaming treatment, too.
Also indigenous is the coffee. Hot, rich and deep, it is handled with
care. The milk comes heated, and you can sprinkle in crunchy raw sugar.
It's available 24 hours a day at the bar – for those not busy boozing.
If the film Eat Drink Man Woman had been shot at this all-inclusive
resort, it would have to be titled Drink Drink Man Woman. From Piña
Coladas to Cuba Libres, there's a whole lotta cocktail shaking going on.
And the bartenders don't skimp on the liquor. One suspects the Havana
Club rum is cheaper than the mixers. Many a guest is sustained more by
cocktail calories than by breakfast, lunch or dinner.
At home, flipping through Cuban cookbooks, I read that there tends to be
little distinction between the haute and the homestyle there. I got a
glimpse of that on holiday in Cuba. Call it turista cuisine.
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