One of my favourite meals is in a typical thatched roof Cuban restaurant ‘El Palenque’ under tall palms and surrounded by mango trees in the countryside.
I learn that the palenques had their origins in the 19th Century in the days before slavery was abolished. Slaves would escape and hide in fortified enclosures where they could grow crops and raise pigs and chickens. Edmundo remembers the Palenque in the home he would go to outside Havana with his family in Mariel. If the slaves ate the Roast pork with Mojo sauce (sour orange), and the crisply fried chicken with black beans and white rice (for Moors and Christians’ says Edmundo), they must have been doing well. My delicious half a chicken meal cost all of $3 out here. Boris has come up with a winner again.