Cuban food

A meal in Cuba is either:
1. A sandwich - grilled, usually ham and cheese, or
2. A dinner of rice/rice and beans, fish or meat, some veggies and something fried, like plantains or potatoes.

If you get really crazy, you could eat some eggs and fruit for breakfast.
If you want a big variety of cuisine, Cuba is not the place for you. Basic restaurants have more basic versions of dishes 1 and 2. The fancy restaurant where we ate on Christmas Eve had fancier rice and beans with juicier meat. Both of these meals are tasty. I didn't get tired of them until the last day or two.

At our casas in Viñales and Cienfuegos we could eat in. The owners of the house would cook breakfast, dinner, or both for their guests. We soon starting eating only breakfast and dinner, because that was enough. Dinner, with all of the above plus soup and dessert, cost $8-12 per person. There was enough food for about 5 people. When I apologized to Lourdes, the owner of our Cienfuegos house, for not being able to finish, she explained that Cubans like to eat a lot - a lot of rice, beans, meat and potatoes, but not a lot of vegetables. Knowing that Cubans buy much of their food with ration cards, I guessed that she was not telling me the whole story. I just hoped someone could enjoy my leftovers.

Restaurants in Cuba are less reliable than home-cooked meals at the casas. Most restaurants are state-owned and designed for tourists and the food is pretty bad. In the mid-1990s, privately owned restaurants or paladars were legalized. The food we ate at paladars was much better, and the portions were still huge. Cubans themselves don't eat out much. It's too expensive. They do buy food on the street, like pizzas, sandwiches and fast food.

Drinks are easy, because there are not many choices. There is one brand of national soda - cola, lemon-lime or orange, two kinds of beer - lighter and not as light, and a variety of juice boxes. The prices for drinks are the same almost anywhere you go.

Some foods are hard to find in Cuba: milk, apples, tea, whole wheat bread. But we get plenty of those in Germany. Please pass me the black beans and the plantains.