The Twenty Third of April
After another bite of black beans and a gulp of hot coffee, I thought to myself “Thank God we’re leaving today because I think these people are trying to kill me!” This morning after finishing the cooking, Senora stood directly over my right shoulder, all but counting each time I chewed. I told her husband, conveniently stand post in front of me, that the food, was, without a doubt, the best food in all of Cuba. I was hoping, nay, praying, that he would notice my blinking out “S.O.S.” as I chewed and nod off his lurking wife in a moment of mercy. His only response though, was a sharp smile and a soft “See, dear, I told you they all eat this much.” And plow ahead I did.
Of course, aside from my jokes, I was awfully thankful for the food especially since in the eight hour trek to Havana there would be, aside from the men selling soft guyaba jelly and sweaty farmstead cheese, little else in the way of road food.
The long and relatively uneventful trip ended mercifully at “El Aljibe”, an open aired Paladar serving family sized portions of roasted chicken in mojo, the classic Cuban bitter orange and garlic sauce (the recipe is purported to be a state secret), rice, black, beans, fried plantains & cabbage salad. By the time the rum, coffee and torreja, a syrupy cold French toast, started flowing I was well on my way to being back to normal (read: “full”) and ready for a scalding hot shower back in my palace of a hotel, the Melia Havana Miramar.
That night, with the southerly breezes slipping past the long, gauzy curtains, I drifted off to sleep listening to the tides from the Straights of Florida applauding Havana in all of her efforts.
