The website “Directo al Paladar México” posted an article recently about the most relevant food trends for 2020. Two of these trends are focused on sustainable food through “regenerative agriculture” and the constant search for alternative ingredients of vegetable origin to eliminate all the harmful chemical components and preservatives.
Luckily we have several restaurants in Cuba that defend healthy food and work hard to be able to guarantee organic products to their clients. CODEPINK´s second stop this time was one of these restaurants: Mediterraneo Havana. Even though we missed the presence of its visionary owner Raúl Relova, visitors knew about what Mediterraneo Havana does thanks to the head waiter Ricardo Menendez Martinez. “We are a farm to table paladar, and we have received several awards for the kind of food we make. We are members of Slow Food International and our food comes from a farm called Vista Hermosa. This farm provides all our vegetables and the meats we use in our menu. One of the activities we organize along with Slow Food is the Mercado de la Tierra at Vista Hermosa, and we also offer tours to the farm to enjoy the ambiance of the countryside and a traditional lunch […]. Going back to Mediterraneo Havana I would like to tell you that our owner is Cuban but our chef is Italian, and the name of this restaurant is based on their idea of bringing the Mediterranean diet to Havana.”
The dinner offered to the visitors was of course a farm to table menu. Introduced with a refreshing mojito as ‘welcome cocktail,’ the menu consisted of focaccia with a combo of homemade sauces and cheeses and spinach croquettes as starter, course raviolis stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach for the second course, meat kebab with sautéed vegetables as main course, and ice cream as dessert to seal the evening.
At dinner we were able to talk with two members of CODEPINK´s group and we asked them their impressions. “I have been in Cuba several times and there is a big difference specially culinary wise. Paladars are different now and the food has improved a lot; I guess the owners did not have access to quality food back then and now look for example how this restaurant has its own farm […]. I wonder though how different the food is at paladars from the food Cubans make at home, and if they have access to the same products…I don´t think it´s same,” commented Roberta Penn who has visited Cuba on other occasions with CODEPINK. Timothy Bood, who is visiting our country for the tenth time and is a member of a Canadian solidarity with Cuba group said to us with a big smile on his face: “We used to have a joke a few years ago about how incredibly diverse Cuban food was because it was ham and cheese, cheese and ham, toast bread with ham and cheese…but it´s definitely not like that anymore. Now there are excellent restaurants in Cuba like this one with delicious healthy food. The week just started but in every place we have visited so far the food was fantastic.”
There is no question that Mediterraneo Havana left a good taste in CODEPINK´s visitors’ mouths with its excellent cuisine, however Roberta Penn was right about the big difference between the food at paladares and the food in Cuban homes. Regardless of the real gap in purchasing power, we must say that a lot of Cuban families don´t eat as well as they could. We must continue working on promoting healthy food so the Cubans feed themselves better with the little we have. we think it is possible, what do you think?
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