THE CUBAN QUESTION

CUBAN TIMES NEVER GONE

LITTLE HAVANA


 Sadness always is something to fight.

Outside PUB

Middle class Cubans never stop doing so. As a result, in the restaurants, bistros and stores lining Calle Ocho or nearby streets ,  afternoon times  do not end behind closed doors and noiseless avenues, without singing and dancing. Whatever exile might be, Cuban life strives to remain itself the way it used to be before 1959 and socialism take over the motherland.

One cannot forget that joy was a Cuban invention. As a Hispanic legacy, the island's life is still colorful, exciting and exuberant, even in those endless times.  Pub Restaurant still keeps this tempo. There, food quality is very Cuban, say, spicy, a little bit traditional, Latino, so to speak. Steaks filled with onion, black beans, hot sauce, pepper -filled meat, several types of rice and meals, the famous Cuban coffee called espresso, cake tapped with syrup;  Pub restaurant tries to be a kind of multicultural restaurant. But never mind, its Cuban roots are deeply anchored in Little Havana.

Everything there breathes Cuban times. Adorned map speaks of time already gone yet seems, yet  welcome you with a touch of melancholy and epicurism. The kitchen is not too far. Youths, middle-age women come back and forth, carrying food and beverages. Pub is very relaxing place. Protocol is replaced by simplicity and kindness. Good feelings to fit exile’s mood. What a solace!

Outside, life goes on. The vibrant Floridian sky has plenty of perspective as summer unfolds under its typical sun. Little Havana, the center of the Cuban business, displays behind its glass stores, the forbidden fruit of the Cuban socialism, luxury, car, goods, furniture, good food and so on. Capitalism is now the Cuban challenge. Pub Restaurant stands between this American grace and the shadows of the current Cuban day.

First of all, it lets people live like  they want. Aging ladies and gentlemen, wearing old fashioned clothes of times, moved by danzones and French songs of the late fifties, gather around tables while patting each other. A white-haired man, who might have been  joyful during his youth, improvises playing piano and “tchatcha”. The two-man band seems to be happy to get help as wrinkled women and other people turning the seventies, restart life as in Proust’s Madeleine.

Finally Cuban times are never gone. This is the conclusion. Pub’s owners have done all they could to recreate the Cuban touch of the fifties. A past nostalgic restaurant which is mixing past and present in America, a country for youth and future.

PUB FOOD