I’m now back in Guanacaste, Costa Rica with just enough time for everyone to get geared up for the Winter. It’s absolutely amazing to see the fields, parched from the long and dry Summer go from drab and dusty browns to explosive emerald greens virtually over night.

Yesterday morning, I piled into the car with a friend of mine to drive to the nearby Santa Cruz, the seemingly forgotten Tico hub laying a bumpy forty-five minutes to the southeast. Far from any prominent position in international guide books, Santa Cruz is a long sip of Costa Rican life, streets choked with slow moving bikes, passengers hitching rides on the handlebars, street side vegetable stands, and women chatting sitting low in their laced rocking chairs on their immaculate front porches.

Locals come here to take care of their day to day business: affordable groceries, impossibly slow banking, auto repairs. As they wrap up their affairs, wait for the bus or take a break from replacing transmissions, everyone seems to pass through Co-op Tortilla, in my opinion, the greatest restaurant in the history of ever. In an effort to scrape up a few extra Colones years ago, a group of Santacruzanas began selling hand pressed tortillas door to door. Their efforts, wildly successful inspired them to set up their own little restaurant, located in a sun stained barn at the very back of town. Furnished with two 40 foot long picnic tables, this restaurant is standing room only come mid-day as anyone worth their weight in rice and beans slips in for a lunch you only wish your grandmother was capable of.

There are only a few options every day so the menu, rapidly recited by your server, is always changing. The more times you eat here the more you realize the waitresses don’t divulge all of their offerings seemingly keeping a few of their best plates a secret just for the guests in the know. Sopa Albondigas, rich chicken and vegetable soup with fist sized corn and chicken dumplings peeking through achiote tinged broth and Puerco en Salsa, salty sliced pork loin bathed in a glossy tomato sauce with chunks of carrot and onion, two plates among many, remain unmentioned only to tease us after we’ve ordered our lunch.

Arriving before the big lunch push we shared our enormous picnic table with a young couple more intent on cooing at each other than eating their quickly cooling food. As we waited on our lunch we swatted at lazy panhandling flies and watched families slurping up bowls of Caldo de Pollo and plates of scrambled eggs. Our waitress slid by laying out a jumbled pile of mismatched silver, a plate of steaming hot tortilla fresh off the wood fired comal and my little juice glass of tamarind juice saving or overloaded plastic plates for her second trip.

And then it was upon us: A quarter chicken poached in cilantro and onion broth resting on a pile of Gallo Pinto, Tico rice studded with black beans and sweet peppers and a jar of fiery pickled Panamanian chiles. I laughed as I noticed that in between each bit I would exclaim “oh this is sooo good” before jamming another bite of rice and chile in my mouth. These little local smoke filled corners always end up my personal reminders that life, despite all of our efforts, is simple and best enjoyed with a crispy tortilla.

Alain, ricocheting our tiny pea pod of a rental through traffic choked Havana, took us to what many would call the most famous restaurant in Cuba, La Guarida, where the famous film “Fresas Y Chocolate” was filmed. After a quarter hour of popping up and down the vibrating back streets, he stopped the car in front of what looked like a building straight out of WWII riddled Paris. Crumbling holes in the wall big enough to drive a tank through, flaking paint showing flaking plaster showing centuries old brick and rows of blindingly white bed sheets hung to dry in the ever present Atlantic breeze.

“Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re here” Alain replied.
“Where’s here?”
“Chico, here, the restaurant.” he said looking at me funny.

I stuck my head out the window and scanned up and down the building’s three stories thinking to myself wondering how it was even possible that this place was still standing. And then I caught a glimpse of the tiny, almost imperceptible sign: “La Guarida.” Hey! We were here.

We made our way up two flights of questionable marble stairs that had long forgotten their weighty heritage after years and years of equal parts neglect and history. We came to a stop in front of a heavy, locked wooden door with a buzzer. As we waited for an answer I thought to myself that I couldn’t recall any good passwords that would ever get us in. After we were graciously buzzed in (sans secret code), we were ushered through tiny hallways plastered with old “Fresas y Chocolate” promo posters and fading photos of both local and international celebrities that had sat in front of steaming plates of Cuban fare and state brand cigarettes.

Our server, a genial forty-something woman informed us we were the first guests for lunch and sat us in the corner at a scarred wooden table next to an open veranda overlooking the cracked streets below. I knew we were in the right place as soon as the mojitos and malanga fritters were lain before us. We started out with a roasted rabbit and smoky eggplant “lasagna”, ceviche Cubana and fresh baked bread. As we were sopping up the last puddles of black olive sauce from the lasagna, our entrees arrived: Roasted Pork Loin in a tart mango sauce, Pargo a la Naranja, and a mixed seafood Risotto prepared table side. We quickly snatched up or forks and dug in, our eyes rolling back in our heads from sensory overload and before we knew it, we were fighting over the last bits of lobster stuck to the sides of the risotto pan.

As we waited for dessert to come, we sipped tiny cups of impossibly strong Cuban coffee and 15 year old Havana Club Reserva Rum served up in ballooned snifters. The server slipped by and dropped, in front of me, a flourless chocolate torte with an evaporated milk sauce, and in front of Fernando, a chocolate tres leches, sponge cake soaked in rum and sweetened milk. In the afterglow of our meal we sat full-bellied and all but laughing knowing that this wouldn’t be the last time we’d be here. To say that I was thankful is more than an overstatement. I was floored.

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.

Apparently, upon learning that I was a cook, the Senora of the house, may God bless her, decided to pull out all the stops, something not easily done in heavily rationed Cuba. Now in my short experience, a local deciding to go whole hog has almost always ended on my near death from obligatory overeating (read “Spanish Fish and Egg Debacle”). This was, in no way, an exception nor was it something I was mentally or physically prepared for. I soon noted a sharp difference though: It was the best food I’d eaten in Cuba. A chopped fruit salad of banana, guava, & pineapple, ham, cheese, green olives, chopped cabbage salad, black beans wtih pork skin, Tortilla Espagnola, fresh orange juice and scalding hot cafe con leche. I was all but weeping as I tried to field good natured inquiries about the quality of the food. As she asked for suggestions, I, in my sleep addled Spanish assured her that she, was in fact, the teacher and I her student and that the only thing that was missing was a ceremonious bibbity-bobbity-boo from her centuries old wooden spoon.

With Fernando off to a “free day” in Holguin, I clambered back upstairs to lazy breezes, warm Cuban sun and a solid dose of Louis L’Amour. After a slow nap, I spent the rest of the now late afternoon talking life and politics in Cuba with Alain over a bottle of rum. If just one thing could be learned from the Cuban people, I feel it would be the preserving power of pride, accepting a poor deal in life and playing it as if it were a flush.

Alain poured me a thumb of Havana Club and I said “I hope one day Cuba gets its freedom.”
“May it never change,” he replied.

We clinked glasses and drank.

Full of vigor, Holguin proved to be the Cuba I had always imagined; rife with grumbling old cars sputtering through the narrow streets and even older men squabbling through cigar stained mustaches over domino tables in the park. Even the nimble breezes from the Atlantic that tip-toed around crumbling corners seemed to whisper of happier times.

We quickly found a place to stay: two rooms in a local family’s home tucked neatly between the central park and the town’s almost ridiculously large baseball stadium.

Finding a tiny Spanish restaurant with a colonial era garden, we elbowed up to ceramic pots of nuclear-hot paella, crisp and vinegary cucumber salad and Cerveza Cristal bubbling lazily in jelly jars. I was slowly beginning to see that there is definitely good food to be had in Cuba. You just have to head off the beaten track and do some hunting to find it (and besides, chances are, you’ll be so hungry by the time you find it, it won’t matter if it’s all that great).

As our late lunch settled, we meandered through the vibrating streets while the Holguineros, in spite of our presence, went about their business. Back at home beneath an ancient ceiling fan slowly stirring the already cool afternoon air sleep wasn’t too far off, nor was a late night out on the town.

But once inside, what we had expected, walls of bread crusty and steaming from the oven, gave way to the bitter Cuban reality: packages of soda crackers and dusty boxes of candy most likely from before the days that Fidel and Che first high-fived in Havana. We snatched up a few packets of honey oat cookies, a bag of gnarled bread sticks and a bar of Turron (a chewy Spanish nougat studded with almonds) chucked down our pesos and ran for the door, knowing now that it was imperative we make it to Guantanamo by noon or we’d be scraping the coffers, looking for lunch.

Arriving at just after one to a darkened restaurant (actually the living room of a family’s home) Fernando in his endless Salvadorian charm wrangled the cook, a sweet old lady, into serving us a bit to eat. Soon after, she was bringing us a cabbage salad tart with vinegar and sugar, arroz cangri, chopped rice strafed with black beans and poached baby shrimp bobbing in a spicy tomato broth. To round it all out a plateful of tostones, crispy fried green plantains and frothy cans of beer bought from the house next door. As we lunched, the cook came back to our table and bragged on her grandson, a national chess champ, who was away at a tournament in Guantanamo province.

With full bellies and high spirits, we climbed back into the car to continue eastward towards Baracoa, the purported Shangri-La of Cuba, isolated from the rest of the island by a range of grandfatherly mountains and scrub pine stubble.

In the foothills of the Sierra del Puril we stopped and bought mangoes from a woman and her grubby, roly-poly two year old son. As I pulled apart my own headily perfumed mango with my fingers, juice ran down my arms, dripping onto my pants and the warm costal air pushed its way though the cracked window. I, in a moment of clarity, realized that I was, at that very instant, the luckiest person alive on the planet.

After an enormous breakfast of fresh fruit, Spanish chorizo, Manchego cheese, and coffee so strong it made the enamel on my teeth sizzle, we left our hotel, the Spanish owned Melia Havana Miramar, and headed out on our epic route eastward across the length of the island. (As a brief side note: because of its dependency on tourism, the Cuban state treats foreigners like royalty while the Cubans are absolutely banned from all hotels. I guiltily ate well while the Cubans had to stand outside.) The trip out of town gave us full view of the “overwhelming success” of the revolution, with block after block of hundred year old buildings mouldering in the humidity, begging for attention and knowing full well they deserve it. We weaved our way through gasping old Chevrolets and swaggering mule drawn taxis and out onto the three lane free-for-all highway with the colonial Camaguey in our sights.

Several hours into our trip and nary a restaurant in sight, I laughed to myself as we swung into a service station thinking “Fernando can you pass me one of those sandwiches we bought at a Cuban gas station? I’m so hungry I could eat a sandwich from a Cuban gas station.” And as things looked more and more Griswaldian, I pulled myself out the back seat to have a look around. Inside, finding only tired looking pastry and disappointed tomato-less pizzas looking less than convincing in their performances, I opted to wait until the next stop, unaware of the fact that it waited more than six hours down the road in Camaguey.

As our Camaguena waitress plopped down a plate of vinegary cucumbers and steak with onions, i woozily said my blessings and proceeded to eat every last drip on my plate, up to and including a piece of flat bread that very well may have been made of burned wood. Alain, my new Cuban friend and trusty driver, and I guzzled our frothy Bucaneros and it was quick off to bed with another full day of travel lying in wait.

It was safe to say that my first Cuban meal was graciously served to me on the airplane: A confused, greasy puff pastry filled with oily chicken and cheese, a “salad” of shaved carrot and cucumber that tasted like floor cleaner smells and a crumbly little cake that looked like a Ho-Ho except it was jammed full of grape jelly. “If you think that was bad,” Fernando said, “just wait. In a week you’ll be clawing for it.”

“But I always liked Cuban food,” I said to myself not really considering the only time I’d ever eaten Cuban was inside the United States. But because of the inaccessible ingredients, hopelessly old kitchen equipment, and kitchen staffs lulled into indifference by state guaranteed salaries, the best Cuban food will always be eaten outside of Cuba. There is something to be said, though, in my opinion, about a country whose top three foods are ice cream, pizza, and french fries. But with even the most optimistic guide books wishing me luck on finding anything worth eating, I was quickly feeling dispondant.

After an hour long questioning, at the airport, that stopped just shy of rubber gloves, we made our way into town for an early dinner and an evening stroll through Havana proper.

And we did have good food. The one thing I’ve managed to learn so far (in my three hours) here in Cuba, is that there are thousands of very stern rules and an exception for each and every one of them. At La Cocina de Lilian, our little table was in the middle of a private garden inside an even more private house and as I ate my little crock of “ropa vieja” and garlicky “malanga fritters” I hoped we weren’t experiencing the Cadillac now with Peugeots on the horizon.

And what was the first thing I did in Costa Rica, aside from telling three thousand taxi drivers that I didn’t need a ride? I ate…a lot. Fernando and I jammed all of my stuff into the back of the car and headed to Machu Picchu, one of the spots on my “I have to eat there as soon as I get back” list, for a good homey Peruvian lunch. Fernando, always the first one to order entirely too much food for everyone at the table, ordered almost as soon as we sat and when the whole thing was said and done I was looking at a mountain of Causa de Camerones, Lomito Salteado, Corvina Estofada and a bowl of chile sauce that was so hot it would make your nose hairs split and curl as soon as you caught a whiff. I can get away with saying there is no doubt that the potato’s origins are Peruvian through and through. They’re in absolutely everything. The Causa de Camerones for example, is the potato salad your grandmother never could make but always wanted to, studded with pink little shrimp and smooth chunks of ripe avocado. Topped off with pungent pickled onions, it was enough to make me sneak a few tears into my tiny little napkin and then sip my beer to console my poor heart-broken self. Lomo Salteado? Yeah that’s like a Peruvian beef stir fry with french fries tossed in at the last second, causing me to think that I am, because of my overwhelming urge to shout and dance at the sight of this dish, quite possibly of Inca descent.

Overall, I’ve had a fairly pedestrian food day aside from the heated discussion as to what Costa Rican “mondongo” stew is. All I know is that if you have to debate the origin of the meat, if it actually is meat at all, then i need to belly up and give it a go.

Cuba, by the way, is happening for sure. We leave early early on Wednesday morning so by lunch time I’ll be buying black market tomatoes and trying to back up my claims for knowing a good pig’s face recipe. Stay tuned.