Eating in Havana #WeekendCooking #SaturdaySnapshot

As I wrote in an earlier post about food in Cuba, our meals were delicious but often had a certain sameness about them — a choice of chicken or fish or pork (all grilled to perfection), a salad plate of  fresh vegetables, Moors and Christians (black beans and rice), and fresh fruit or a dessert that was usually fruit-based.

Havana, of course, had a wider variety. We visited the fanciest restaurant of the whole trip on our first night in the city. Paladar San Cristobal featured glittery tablecloths, sparkling dinner ware, and appetizer trays with all the selection one would expect in any restaurant in the world.

Embroidered and sequined table cloth and my gilt-edged plateAppetizers, in glorious variety.

As I wrote in my previous post, Cubans rarely eat beef. Cows are for milk and milk is for children. We were offered beef only once or twice in a week.

Lobster, on the other hand, was readily available. Before this trip, I wasn’t even sure I liked lobster. As a Midwesterner, it’s rarely an option for me. It turns out that I like lobster very much and I ate more of it during that week in Cuba than I have in my previous 53 years.

Lobster at Paladar San Cristobal. This was also one of the few times that I was served a leafy green that wasn’t cabbage.

The next day we ate lunch in an Italian restaurant, XANA, so that offered a nice change of pace.

The salads we were served in Cuba were composed rather than tossed and featured cabbage rather than lettuce.Many of the meals for our tour group were served family style. I forgot to take a photo until we’d already eaten much of the pizza and pasta that we were served at XANA. The pizza was very cheesy, but the pasta had a nice tomato sauce.
I’ll share this Cuba post with Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads because those folks will appreciate the food theme. I’ll have one more food-centered post from Cuba about the day we visited a farm.

I’ve been slowly re-capping my October trip to Cuba, sharing most posts to Saturday Snapshot at West Metro Mommy Reads:

• Photos of Entering Cuba
• Book review of Cuban Revelations by Marc Frank
• Photos of the Palacio de Valle
• Book review of Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
• Photos of downtown Cienfuegos
• Food in Cuba
• Colorful Trinidad, Cuba
• Book review of Havana Nocturne by T.J. English with photos of 50s Cuba
• Interiors of a 1929 house in Havana
• Colors of Cuba exhibit
• Views of Havana from Hotel Capri
• Architecture and book stalls in the Plaza de Armas, Havana