the 40s and 50s wear the neglect on their

exteriors; state-run, the staff in starched

whites are surly, terse. Lime juice for mojitos

is poured from a Tetra Pak.

Havana’s are the tales that she, almost

thirty-years-old now, a chef in Boston who

grew up with these immigrant stories in their

Miami family home, recounts. They have

fused with her identity as a Cuban-American,

with her recollection of comidas criollas, the

Creole childhood meals eaten in her mother’s

kitchen, of the Spanish language spoken with

a Cuban accent. She’s learned that her mother,

who left Varadero with its fluffy white-sand

beaches, prefers the black beans cooked thick

in Moros y Cristianos, a staple native dish.

Her mother’s twin sister, on the other hand,

likes them soupy. She knows that croquetas

de jamón and the cups of Cuban espresso

with “a layer of thick espuma” found in cafés

in Miami’s Little Havana, provide more than

sustenance to Cuban Americans. To eat and to

drink the heritage of their forebears is to walk

a ritual tightrope, with a foot perched in either

country. Tatiana Rosana, executive chef at the

Outlook Kitchen & Bar at the Envoy Hotel is

yet to step foot in Cuba.

Though she has never been, the pining

for the ancestral home of her parents is no

less real. Writer Carolina Hospital (author of

The Child of Exile – A Poetry Memoir) calls this

a “consciousness of exile” that takes root in

communities that maintain strong ties to the

Cuban experience.

Rosana’s grandmother bacalhau (salt cod)

croquetas take pride of place on the menu

at her restaurant. “Without nostalgia, there

is no emotion in food,” she says. “For me,

feelings lie in past experiences, in flavours ›

Dining on memories of

La Patria

The markets I visit in Havana are

dreary, the produce bedraggled,

earth crusting the foot-long yuca

(cassava), flies circling the plantains,

chilli peppers that are yellowing,

shrivelled. The state-run stores (there are no

other kind) in Calle Obispo, the main drag

in Old Havana, are sparse and filled with

Chinese imports. The once-lavish high-rise

hotels and their famous bars built with

American investors’ and mafia money in

Nostalgia, for a homeland long departed, lies at the core of the Cuban diaspora’s quest for cultural identity. Dishing out memories at the kitchen table is one way that the legacy is passed on, writes Ishay Govender-Ypma.

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and ingredients that sing to my childhood.”

Memory, whether based in lived experiences,

or relayed, as it is in immigrant cultures,

becomes “an exercise of the living”, according

to Flora Mandri in Guarding Cultural Memory

– Afro-Cuban Women in Literature and the

Arts. Memory, she says, imposes both a

responsibility and a curse on those who

choose to remember. Mandri’s work delves

into slavery and its everlasting legacy in Cuba.

Comidas criollas is “peasant cuisine” according

to Mary Urrutia Randelman (Memories of a

Cuban Kitchen), a fusion of European, native

Taíno and Ciboney Indian (the original

inhabitants who were merged with and

eventually wiped out by the Spanish) and the

food of West African slaves who worked the

sugarcane fields. It might be simple but she

explains that it never lacks flavour – sauces

undergo a lengthy simmer with onions and

garlic; limes and sour oranges, sweet peppers

and butter are used to season.

Fried chicken and rice (pollo con arroz),

shredded beef or lamb (vieja ropa), and stews

are commonplace. The bite-sized “party”

foods such as empanadas, croquetas, like those

Rosana prepares, pastelitos and plantain fries –

or tostones when ripe - are beloved by Cubans.

I imagine that the foods loved by Cuban

Americans are made with the kind of

abundant produce that restaurateurs who

run Havana’s paladares, private home-run

restaurants (first legalised in Cuba between

1991–1995), have to fly to Miami to acquire.

For the longest time, serving beef and lobster

was illegal in Cuba. It’s odd that a Brazilian

telenovela aired during the Special Period,

the economic depression trailing the collapse

of the Soviet Union,

inspired the formation

of the paladar. But it

bears testament to the

resourcefulness of Cubans.

Nothing goes to waste here.

Recipes are adjusted; ingredients

are substituted. Here, survival and

nostalgia are at odds.

Rigid laws and a relatively acquiescent

population aside, Havana is not without

its hustlers. In The Other Side of Paradise,

journalist Julia Cooke mentions that to buy

decent pastries that taste of butter, you need

insider knowledge. The only way to procure

good cheese and yoghurt, Spanish ham, wine

and olive oil is to buy it on the black market.

Today, due to burgeoning diplomatic ties

with the US (credit the efforts of the Obama

administration, not the current one) and

thanks to growing entrepreneurship such

as the rise of casa particulares (family-run

guesthouses), the dining landscape is rapidly

changing. Paladares cannot keep up with the

tourist demand and I secure reservations

by booking on the phone from South Africa

weeks in advance. Wi-Fi hotspots (costly at $2

an hour) were introduced in 2015, but Cubans

do not have unlimited access to the Internet.

Paladar meals sometimes cost more than a

monthly Cuban salary – averaging under $40.

Tourists breakfast on four-course spreads

at hotels and casa particulares; the average

Cuban has a bread roll and café con leche,

sometimes an egg or a

pastry. Never all.

Rosana speaks

about her grandfather,

emotional on a family

road trip to North Carolina in

the States. The mountain ranges

evoked memories of Cuba, La Patria (the

homeland). “I never would have thought

that this would make him miss Cuba,” she

says. “One day I’ll visit, and I’ll smile at the

mountains my grandfather didn’t get to see

again.” For now, though, her kitchen brims

with the family’s memories. ▪

Nothing goes to waste here. Recipes are adjusted; ingredients are substituted. Here, survival and nostalgia are at odds.

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Tatiana Rosana, executive chef at the

Outlook Kitchen & Bar at the Envoy Hotel in Boston is

yet to visit Cuba, her homeland – La Patria. Though she has never been, her pining for

the ancestral home is no less real.

WORD OF MOUTH Her father has told her about the vegetable vendors that line the street corners, how the cobblestones, buffed smooth with wear, buzz underfoot with the vibrancy and clamour of tourists. He has described the overflowing baskets of volcano-red chilli peppers that shine like rubies in the sunlight, how he, still a young child, cannot resist touching one, in spite of his mother’s – her abuela’s – admonitions. This is the Havana he recalls fondly, the one he left for Miami at the collapse of the Batista regime at age seven.

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