LITTLE HAVANA
Sadness always is something to fight.
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| 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.
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| PUB FOOD |
