Day 2: Restaurante El Baturro

Upon arriving at our final destination El Baturro we were greeted by a waiter wearing a tuxedo standing just outside the front door. This seems to be the standard for restaurants catering to tourists in Havana, the waiters wear fancy tuxedos and the tourists wear shorts and t-shirts.

The atmosphere was quite nice and the waiters were friendly and spoke at least enough English to understand what we wanted to order. They mentioned the specialty of the day and pointed out any items that they thought would be of particular interest to us.

From what I could see there were mostly European tourists in this particular restaurant and it wasn't too busy but busy enough that the place wasn't completely deserted. Each table was set with napkins folded into triangles and placed on the table with wine glasses each surrounding a large plate featuring the logo of the place, a man drinking from a water sack.

Once we decided what we wanted to eat the pretty plates and cutlery were taken away to be replaced by regular plates and cutlery once the food came. I found this to be somewhat of a standard in restaurants; the plates and cutlery on the tables are for show.

While I wouldn't say that the food at this restaurant was the best food I've ever had it wasn't too bad. Plus, while we were eating they had a band singing Cuban songs (or at least songs sung in Spanish with that type of style). After singing a few songs they would go around to the tables asking for tips which I found to be a little bit annoying, however they weren't pushy about it if you declined.

We passed on dessert asked for the bill (la cuenta) and headed back out to do some more exploring.