How Cuba's Food Changed With Its Politics

I make better Cuban food than anyone over there,” twenty-something Gaby told me as we waited in Miami for a flight to Havana. She was with her mother-in-law, who, like most of the other passengers, carried multiple plastic-covered packages of toys, gifts, and daily necessities that were unavailable or very expensive on the island. Gaby wasn’t going, nor had she ever been. Her abuela—who had raised Gaby and taught her to cook—had fled Cuba as Fidel Castro seized power. When I told the young woman that I was going to research the country’s food culture, she just laughed.

“No one knows how to cook there,” she said. “They’re just surviving.”