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Itinerant bartender and co-owner of Liverpool’s Present Company, Jake O’Brien Murphy, waxes lyrical on sustainability through the lens of Havana’s world-famous El Foridita 

words by Jake O’BRIEN MURPHY

The staccato beat of whirling blenders ripples throughout the sultry Havana night. Droves of vacationers from around the world make a pilgrimage to the ‘Cradle of the Daiquiri’, and if, by chance, any of your well-read friends should ever regurgitate the tired, second-hand advice of ‘you absolutely must visit Havana before the Americans ruin it’,  send them to meet the tens of star-spangled Chucks, Dons and Randy’s elbowing their way to the bar at El Floridita.

For many, a cavalcade of hot pink cadillacs rumbling down the sun-blasted Malecon is the typical thumbnail image conjured up when somebody mentions Havana. It goes hand in hand with the nauseating couplet ‘time capsule’. It is far too easy to assume the belief that a link to a simpler time is intrinsically nicer. Somehow quantifiably more spiritually valuable because it is tempered by hardship and unsullied by money or possession. Notice, though, that the seductive promise of the simple life never sees these new converts so touched that they tear up their ticket home? 

Havana is a modern city from a tangential universe. Archaic infrastructure and the inexhaustible pettiness of their American cousins has left Cubans handicapped to a one-handed tug of war with progression. Which they still somehow manage to win with enthusiasm, energy and laughter.

Alessandro Bolivar conducts the proceedings at El Floridita.
He moves with fluid economy, each step an internalised decision.
He is bartending long division. Hundreds of daiquiris flow over the bar each evening. Fluffy white clouds of rum, lime and sugar seemingly reaching subzero temperatures. These are the drinks Hemmingway wrote about. I was lucky to stand behind the bar with Alessandro on my first visit. He smiled and urged me to make a round of drinks, much in the same way a grandfather watches a toddler clumsily stomp around the living room in his hard-earned slippers, gently nudging them away from sharp-edged furniture. Alessandro told me later that evening that he knows the quality of his blended drinks from the sound they make alone. He has transcended his mortal senses.

‘Sat on a high horse of undeserved privilege, I foolishly offered to smuggle the latest model blender into Cuba on my next visit. My missionary zeal and idiodic, self-assured smirk were both briskly cut short. They use a now defunct model of blender, I was politely informed, and have done since before I was born.’

Sat on a high horse of undeserved privilege, I foolishly offered to smuggle the latest model blender into Cuba on my next visit. My missionary zeal and idiodic, self-assured smirk were both briskly cut short. They use a now defunct model of blender, I was politely informed, and have done since before I was born. That put me in my place. When a piece wears or breaks, the bartenders fix it. No warranty, just ingenuity. In the fickle way of trends, this idea has gone through many permutations. Most recently and most urgently we hear about ‘sustainability’. Sustainability through economic necessity exists day to day in Cuba and has done, in some form, for nearly sixty years.

There is a cohesion to living at the edge of impending disaster, the value of small things like family and neighbours inflates beyond all measure. The collective well being is a fundamental reality for every Cuban. There is a lesson in that somewhere. I, however, am too busy wondering about this particular philosophical quandary: If Alessandro has a blender and he replaces each part over a lifetime, is that then the same blender? And does it really matter when the daiquiris are that good? JOM