Provisioning Cuba’s Private Restaurants: Linking Tourism and Agriculture

Abstract

ABSTRACTCuba’s growing reliance on international tourism as a source of foreign exchange has been accompanied by an opening to private sector activities, including private restaurants, or paladares. How these restaurants provision themselves is a question of particular interest, since markets have played a relatively minor role until recently in the internal distribution of foodstuffs in Cuba’s socialist economy. Drawing upon interviews with owners and chefs in Havana, this paper describes their diverse provisioning strategies and analyzes the problems they face in acquiring reliable sources of fresh food and the other ingredients. Benefiting from the trend in international food consumption favoring fresh, local food, we find the paladares are strengthening tourism-agricultural linkages in two ways: through farm-to-table arrangements with agroecological farmers and by their steady demand for high quality produce in the “supply & demand” markets that are largely supplied by Cuba’s small farmers.