Pernot is chef and owner of Cuba Libre Rum and Restaurant, which has locations in Washington and three other cities. He’s taking local residents on a five-day trip to Havana in April (and is working on a second trip) to explore the island’s evolving cuisine.
What will you be doing [in Cuba]? We’re going to be visiting farms. We’re going to be visiting some markets where the people in Havana go to shop for food. We’re going to visit paladares and a culinary school. This is all about food. A lot of eating, a lot of drinking, a lot of cigar smoking.
What’s a paladares? The majority of them are in somebody’s home. They put in a little patio and then they have a beautiful pagoda with plants covering the whole thing. Or they have a little bit of a pagoda with a roof and they put 20 to 30 seats underneath it and they cook dinner for everyone underneath it.
Can you describe this new Cuban cuisine? Well, just the places, they are cleaner. There’s different technology they’re starting to use. Different spices. They’re starting to merge a little bit of Japanese into it, a little bit of Chinese. It’s not the huge plate of food you normally get in Cuba anymore. Everything is made on charcoal grills and everything is pretty much organic.
You’re originally from Argentina. Why Cuban cuisine? My wife is Cuban. I’ve been cooking nueva Latina food for a long time and the last eight years I have changed that just to one particular style of cuisine. More than anything I wanted to demonstrate that Cuban food is not the food people know from 50 years ago. It has changed. I’ve been trying to do that in the United States. – Courtney Zott
