Cuban Regional Foodways

Regional

⚠ THE EAST AND THE WEST ARE NOT THE SAME COUNTRY. HAVANA and the west — the city, the paladares, the Chinatown that Chinese indenture built, and ropa vieja, picadillo and the fritura. PINAR DEL RÍO — tobacco country, and the Viñales valley. MATANZAS — sugar, and the densest Afro-Cuban religious and musical presence. The CENTRE — Villa Clara, Cienfuegos, Sancti Spíritus, Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey — cattle and cane. ⚠ THE ORIENTE — Santiago de Cuba, Granma, Holguín, Guantánamo — is where the FRENCH-HAITIAN planters fled in the 1790s bringing coffee and Haitian-descended communities, and it eats spicier, with congrí rather than moros, more coconut, and dishes the west does not have. ⚠ AND THE ISLA DE LA JUVENTUD is its own special municipality.