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Asociación Canaria de Cuba
A Spanish social club that also serves food, the Asociación Canaria de Cuba is housed in a venerable red-bricked building with a fancy lobby. The restaurant upstairs is far more basic, with plastic flowers and crummy tablecloths. But its ambience is secondary - the main reason to come here is the food. The grilled lobster is one of the city's biggest bargains; the shrimp enchiladas and beef stew also give incredible bang for the buck.
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Bar-Restaurante Cabaña
A longtime favorite with Habana bus drivers on the run to and from Varadero, the Cabaña is an unfussy Habaguanex place with alfresco seating and pleasant views across the harbor to the eastern forts. Main dishes highlight beef and come in fairly modest portions; they include filet de res (beef fillet) and filet mignon. There's a bar with a karaoke machine upstairs.
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Café Concerto El Gato Tuerto
Café Concerto El Gato Tuerto (the One-Eyed Cat) is a chic cafe and bar that hosts live music on Fridays and Saturdays. The restaurant upstairs, meanwhile, serves good soup, reasonably priced ropa vieja and excellent lobster fried in butter with a little sweet-and-sour sauce.
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Café O'Reilly
The O'Reilly is a good old-fashioned 'spit-and-sawdust' cafe that sells drinks and snacks morning, noon and night. The bar is spread over two floors connected by a spiral staircase, with most of the action taking place upstairs. Grab an O'Reilly special sandwich and a beer, and listen out for the roaming troubadours.
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Caféteria 3 Y 62
If you're staying in one of the pricey hotels and want a cheaper place to eat, then try this place on the eastern side of the Russian Embassy. It's a varied mix of five or six cheap permanent booths selling beer, biscuits, fried chicken and sandwiches, and the prices are rarely more than a couple of convertibles.
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El Aljibe
On paper a humble Palmares restaurant, in reality a rip-roaring culinary extravaganza, El Aljibe has been delighting both Cuban and foreign taste buds for years. The hype surrounds the gastronomic mysteries of just one dish, the pollo asado (roast chicken), which is served up with as-much-as-you-can-eat helpings of white rice, black beans, fried plantain, French fries and salad. The accompanying bitter-orange sauce is said to be a state secret.
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El Café Mercurio
El Café Mercurio is an elegant indoor-outdoor cafe-restaurant with cappuccino machines, air-conditioning, intimate booths, smooth marble finishes and waiters in black ties. You can get decent main dishes here such as lobster and steak tartare, but it's also a great place for lunch or a snack. The formidable Cuban sandwich with ham, cheese and pork will easily keep you going until dinnertime. There are also some great desserts.
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El Chelo
El Chelo is situated in the swanky Club Habana. Perched in front of the sparkling Straits of Florida and a well-raked scimitar of private beach, El Chelo serves everything from a cheap, tasty ropa vieja to a pricier (but still tasty!) lobster. The decor is suitably luxurious.
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El Conejito
This surreal restaurant-bar housed in a red-bricked Tudor-style mansion in central Vedado serves rabbit, rabbit and yet more rabbit, along with a few more standard Cuban staples such as chicken, beef, fish and lobster. Ambience is German-meets-Cuban-meets-Tudor, with an amiable resident pianist serenading all comers. If all this doesn't sound too freaky, give it a whirl.
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El Lugar
If you're in leafy Parque Almendares, check out this restaurant just across the road from the river, which offers fantastic value. For under 5.00 you get a juicy pork fillet, a whole heap of congrí (rice flecked with black beans), salad, tostones (fried plantain patties), ice cream and coffee. There's a talented trio playing nights. The attached pizza place is good too.
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El Palenque
Located next to the Pabexpo exhibition center, this huge place sprawls beneath a series of open-sided bohios (thatched huts) and offers an extensive menu at prices cheap enough to attract both Cubans and foreigners. The cuisine is Cuban-Italian, with pizzas, steak and fries, not to mention the extravagant langosta mariposa . As well as sit-down tables there are smaller booths, and stores that sell everything from cigars to imported apples.
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El Rancho Palco
Situated in a forest near the Palacio de las Convenciones, El Rancho Palco has one of the finest thatched roofs you'll likely ever see. This place has terrific ambience all the time, but it's particularly good at night, when live salsa music fills the air. Ceiling fans help keep the atmosphere cool. Beef is the specialty here, but their fish, chicken and shrimp dishes are also tasty.
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El Santo Angel
Often overlooked by restaurant-seeking travelers, El Santo Angel - situated in a gorgeous colonial house on Plaza Vieja's northwest corner - specializes in seafood, offering such dishes as langosta mariposa (butterflied lobster), as well as fish in green sauce, or with roasted almonds, prawns and vinaigrette. It's reasonably priced and a lovely spot to watch the goings-on in the square.
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Feria Los Fornos
Shoehorned behind a clothes shop on Calle Neptuno, where tourist Habana meets the gritty reality of bustling Centro, Los Fornos is cheap, simple and usually open. Beyond that, pickings are thin, unless you're keen to see what 45 years of rationing has done to Cuban cooking.
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La Casona de 17
Housed in a wonderful eclectic mansion opposite the modernist Edificio Focsa, this small restaurant offers reasonable, if overpriced, food in an attractive early-20th-century setting. The menu specializes in chicken and rice dishes.
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La Cecilia
La Cecilia is an upscale garden restaurant run by government company Palmares. The menu features mainly Cuban cuisine, especially lobster and steak; prices vary, but you can pick up quality meat bruschettas and tender ropa vieja here for as little as 6.00 , making it much cheaper than most eating joints nearby. On occasion La Cecilia hosts excellent live music in its attractive back garden.
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La Ferminia
Habana gets swanky at this memorable restaurant set in an elegant converted colonial mansion along one of Av 5's leafier stretches. Dine inside, in one of a handful of beautifully furnished rooms, or outside on a glorious garden patio - it doesn't matter. The point is the food. A wonderful mixed grill pulled straight from the fire, or a thick filet mignon will set you back a bit, but it will be money well spent.
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La Mina
Despite a rather mediocre menu, La Mina has always been a popular place for travelers thanks to its privileged position on the corner of Plaza de Armas. The building itself used to be a girls' school and was one of the first structures in the old town to get the City Historian's makeover. The varied menu contains chicken, pork and prawns cooked in a variety of ways and the prices are perfectly respectable.
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La Paila
If this place wasn't so off the beaten track, it would be in Habana's top five. With just a few tables ensconced in a lush garden replete with soft-lit lanterns, this is the most romantic paladar no one knows about. And the food is infallible. It does a great bistec Uruguayo (fried, breaded pork stuffed with ham and cheese), or try one of the famous pizzas; both dishes are less than 5.00 .
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La Zaragozana
Established in 1830, La Zaragozana is Habana's oldest restaurant - though it's a long way from being its best. Behind its well-varnished wooden doors lies an ample (and often deserted looking) seating area, plus what must be one of the city's longest bars. The Spanish-themed food - which includes the obligatory paella - is OK, but the ambience, amid assorted Iberian flags and memorabilia, can be a little dark and gloomy.
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Le Select
This minicomplex - complete with swimming pool, boutique shops, bars and a restaurant - is spread across the grounds of a 1950s Miramar mansion that was used after the revolution by a certain Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. Reopened a few years back to serve the neighborhood's affluent diplomatic community (what would Che have said?), Le Select hasn't yet lived up to the hype. The architecture might be impressive, but you'll get far better food elsewhere.
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Los Nardos
Los Nardos is one of a handful of semiprivate Habana restaurants operated by the Spanish Asturianas society. This unprepossessing but well-designed property is decked out in cedar, mahogany and leather, and serves up astoundingly delicious dishes like lobster in Catalan sauce, garlic prawns with sautéed vegetables and authentic Spanish paella. Portions are huge and the prices are unbelievably cheap.
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Mesón La Chorrera
The Mesón La Chorrera is in the Torreón de Santa Dorotea de Chorrera, an old fortified tower that was built by the Spanish in the 17th century and marks the western extremity of the Malecón. The restaurant serves up a Spanish-influenced menu in a unique oceanside setting, and sometimes lays on music.
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Paladar Amistad De Lanzarote
Paladar Amistad de Lanzarote charges around 6.00 for most meals. The portions are large, the staff speak English and you can enjoy your pork and rice amid the cheerful clutter of crowded Centro Habana.
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Paladar Aries
Serving traditional Cuban fare mixed with what are generously referred to as 'international dishes,' this nicely decked-out family-run place in a house dating from 1925 is conveniently located behind the university. There are occasionally wandering troubadours.
