Cuba Sabe, without Bread or Casabe

HAVANA, Cuba. – There is no bread, not even the patrimonial cassava flatbread, the casabe, but still the Cuban regime dares us with a new edition of the controversial culinary festival, Cuba Sabe, an event that is coordinated from the Paradiso Cultural Tourism Agency by Lis Cuesta Peraza, the wife of our present ruler, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Sponsored primarily by the ministries of Tourism and Culture, together with the Chinese Embassy in Havana (the present edition is dedicated to China) and the hotel chain Iberostar, this new episode once again will be held at the Hotel Grand Packard, and will feature activities, workshops, conferences and banquets between January 12 and 14.

The event has been widely promoted in some regime-friendly Cuban news media and in the main official printed dailies; however, it’s been talked about minimally on national radio or television, perhaps to add less fuel to the fire in an environment where discontent due to food shortages is strong, as well as popular rejection of an economic management that for decades has only generated hunger, general shortages and, as a result, the extinction of practically all culinary traditions in the island.

On the streets, and because there is little information out there, there isn’t much talk about this paradox –the financing of an event to discuss flavors, food and culinary traditions in a country where there practically aren’t any- but people engaged in, or informed about, this celebration, like workers in tourist facilities that are involved in the festival, describe it as a mockery, which indeed it is, especially when one of the weakest links of the Cuban tourism sector is precisely the poor level of quality in the gastronomy department or the scant variety of traditional Cuban or international dishes available even in “luxury” hotels like the Grand Packard itself. And the list of “weak links” gets larger every day.

For people who know nothing about Cuban reality, enough proof is provided by the numerous negative comments left by guests and tourists, both domestic and foreign, in sites like TripAdvisor. Those who want to skip the research and who have experienced that “bad taste in the mouth”, only need to check their own taste buds’ memory of any restaurant, cafeteria or bar in Cuba, especially state-owned ones to reach the conclusion that Cuba Sabe 2023 is not just a pretentious event