Arkansas has joined the nation in a fantasy cruise to the hazy tropics, to island food and fun, and to one island in particular: Cuba. Ay, caramba ! The Cuban sandwich is here, even though the United States cut off relations with Communist Cuba 45 years ago. Nations on the outs with the American government generally face certain consequences. One is, they’re off the menu. North Korea, for example: Who wants seconds ? Kim-chee might catch on, but never Kim Jong Il. But Americans always have found something to like about Cuba, Florida’s neighbor, just a 90-mile hop over the troubled water. Thomas Jefferson called it “the most interesting addition which ever could be made to our system of States.” In the 1800 s, Uncle Sam tried to buy Cuba, but Spain wouldn’t sell.
Today’s news from Cuba is the once-iron dictator Fidel Castro’s reported illness and surgery, and the prospect of more hurricanes, and the United States’ jail for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
But today’s Cuban sandwich is something else, seasoned with nostalgia for the Cuba that used to be, or maybe the Cuba that never was — the paradise made of cigar smoke and mirrors.
“Everything in Cuba had once been more beautiful, more elegant, more glamorous,” Rosa Lowinger and Ofelia Fox write in the new book, Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt ).
Little Rock’s new Cuban-Mexican restaurant called Rumba ! is across the waves to the South. To the North, is another new place that evokes a blue lagoon — the Salty Parrot.
In between, the Arkansas River is the color and ripple of corrugated tin. But every mojito makes a tropical getaway seem a little more likely.
Island cooking is the latest trend from the coco-nutty coasts. It means another platter of new words to learn, but the language is no more difficult than “focaccia bread” and “latte” used to be, like this: Mojito: A cocktail made with rum and mint leaves, mucho “in.” Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando, Tony Bennett: Among the celebrities who partied the nights away in old Havana, the nightclub capital of the 1950 s, where the rum poured, and the congas beat and the air was full of smoke and glitter.
Cohiba: One of the bestknown brands of Cuban cigars, a kind once made especially for dignitaries. President Kennedy stocked up on Cuban cigars for himself before he signed the embargo that shut off the supply. His press secretary, Pierre Salinger, told the story that Kennedy rushed him out to buy 1, 000 Petit Upmanns. The movie Weekend in Havana (1941 ) is a look at how Americans once took to Cuba. The title tells the story. Carmen Miranda (the hottie with the fruit on her head ) and Cesar Romero pitch in to make Alice Faye’s vacation in Cuba a peach. Correction: Mango.
Mango: A tropical fruit, but hardly an exotic find these days. Kroger’s grocery store in The Heights greets customers with a display of mangoes just inside the door, along with coconuts, papayas, pineapples and plantains. Plantain: Hard kind of banana that needs cooking. It can be mashed like a sweet potato, or fried in slices like potato chips.
At Wild Oats Natural Marketplace in west Little Rock, Ralph Smith reports having just sold a mango to a woman who planned to make mango salsa.
“That’s pretty normal,” he says. But plantains still are tough to sell. Tough bananas.
“We usually end up throwing them out,” he says.
Arkansans might never go, either, for the likes of Jamaica De Asia Spiced Jerk Hacked Duck (with blueberry mint chutney ) on the menu at Automatic Slim’s Tonga Bar in neighboring Memphis.
But the trend keeps washing in from either side. Memphis ’ Bahama Breeze is another restaurant that touts Cuban Bread appetizers — toasted with cheese and sliced tomatoes on top — and ham and pork Cuban sandwiches.
And Dallas’ Cuba Libre restaurant is all about plantains and black beans.
Other tastes of the islands are everywhere, from Red Lobster’s Parrot Bay Coconut Shrimp, to the Margaritaville Calypso Coconut Shrimp in the grocery freezer, to Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay fruit-flavored rum.
Beans and rice are plain food staples on islands, but upscale American restaurants translate the region’s Spanish and Jamaican influences into sweet-andspicy, fancy drinks and entrees. Cuba Libre: Cocktail made with rum and Coke. Iron Skillet Caribbean Voodoo Stew: A specialty at Little Rock’s Loca Luna restaurant, made of fish, shellfish and chicken in a “spicy Jamaican pepper broth.” Jamaican Pizza: The kind with jerk-spiced chicken at Bosco’s in the River Market District. BLT Cubano: Rumba’s sandwich adds to the classic threesome: Bacon, lettuce and tomato... and avocado.
Today’s back-to-the-islands trend started almost five years ago, as spotted by Nation’s Restaurant News. The trade journal reported a “growing presence” of flavors from Florida and the Caribbean in restaurant menus all over.
The news comes with a mixed salad of reasons. Baby boomers generally have a taste for “bolder flavors,” the restaurant report said. Their kids have grown up with dishes Betty Crocker never imagined (pass the mango chutney ). The nation’s Hispanic populations want the taste of home.
Whatever. At The Sauce Company in Little Rock these days, Grant Irwin hustles to keep Walkerswood Jerk Seasoning from Jamaica on the shelf.
“People buy two at a time,” he says, although he cautions new buyers to go easy with the blistering accent. People on vacation in the islands discover a taste that is Spanish and Jamaican, European, Cuban and more, all stirred together, “and they want to bring that flavor back,” Irwin says.
Marie Sharp’s: A line of “Belizean Heat” pepper sauces, including habanero, a name that means “from Havana.” Island mania is like the Tiki look that brought back yesterday’s Tiki bar as a party motif, and it sails along with Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, it’s like today’s bikini: It covers a small area. Cuba: A 43, 000-square-mile island, smaller than Arkansas, in the West Indies. Cuba is bad news, but good music. Son: An old beat, it set off the 1930 s dance craze for the happy sound of rumba. Conga: Another dance from the same era. The party crowd formed a line, the longer the better, and snaked around the dance floor. Shuffle-shuffle-shuffle, kick. Cuba has been a paradox from the start. Governments go sour under the sweetest blue skies. (Castro tossed out the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who stole the country from elected President Carlos Prio Socarras, who... )
People risk their lives to escape the island’s poverty and repression, but they sing and play some of the world’s breeziest music.
Before Castro — before the Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961; and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 — in a different time, Cuba’s main export to the United States was, in a word: Fun.
Cigars. Hot peppers. Hot rhythm.
The bandleader who made the conga such a hit in the 1930 s was a young Cuban immigrant, Desi Arnaz. His signature song was another Cuban number, “Babalu,” along with “Cuban Pete” and “Cuban Taxi.” Success took him to Hollywood, where he met and married actress Lucille Ball. Their 1950 s TV series, I Love Lucy, cast Arnaz in the loosely autobiographical role of Cuban band leader Ricky Ricardo.
As much as they loved Lucy, viewers also loved the way Arnaz twisted the language, and his comically explosive fits of temper.
“Luu-ucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do !” he would demand of his red-haired wife, but she often used Ricky’s words to turn the attack Ricky: (In his Cuban way. ) I won’t switch apartments. Understand ?
Lucy: Yes.
Ricky: What did I say ?
Lucy: “I wun’t swish apartments.” The show nearly failed. The network powers-that-be were afraid TV’s wide American audience wouldn’t like the foreign sound of Arnaz’s voice. He proved them wrong by auditioning the show in front of a live crowd.
I Love Lucy’s sixth season arrived on DVD earlier this year, just in time for an upbeat in the kind of music Desi (and Ricky ) taught America to love. Xavier Cugat: “The Rumba King” was America’s favorite Cuban (born in Spain, but he grew up in Havana ) before Arnaz, the kid he helped catch a break. In his 70 s, the gentlemanly Cugat’s marriage to his excitable, 40-years-younger Spanish wife, Charo, kept him on his toes. Eyes of Innocence: 1984 breakthrough album for The Miami Sound Machine and lead singer, Cuban native Gloria Estefan. Their 1986 single “Conga !” set the beat for the group’s lasting popularity. The Buena Vista Social Club: American guitarist Ry Cooder assembled this CD’s group of Cuban musicians in their 70 s and 80 s. The old men played with never a wrinkle, and this 1997 release lit a new fire. Ay, Caramba !: A fusion of Jamaican and Cuban rhythms by the Afropop group Ska Cubano, is among Billboard magazine’s World Music chart leaders. Cafe Cubana: Cuban gone as mainstream as steamed milk, for sale at Starbuck’s.
Recent changes allow for Cuba to buy American agricultural produces such as rice from Arkansas. The old embargo keeps out Cuban exports, but no law can stop a man from wanting a guayabera to go with his caipirinha.
Guayabera: A linen shirt of Cuban design. One source is the Miami-based online store Mi Tienda Cubana at mycubanstore. com, which also sells posters, jewelry and pesos that pre-date Castro. Caipirinha: Cocktail made with cachaca, or sugar-cane liquor. Brazil claims the invention, but caipirinhas are called for wherever dreams turn to sunny beaches. Cubavera: Island fashions available through Macy’s. Arkansas: Still an island of relative calm in a sea of tropical commotion.
But it wasn’t so long ago that sushi sounded as peculiar as a plantain — as mumbly as a mojito — and then came the sushi tsunami. And look at sushi now.
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