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Chef David Guas gets a lesson in Cuban cooking on a rice-and-beans-fueled trip around Havana

October 19, 2012

By Mark Kurlansky, Food & Wine Magazine

October 2012

On January 1, 1959, Mariano Guas, 13 years old, was at home in Havana when he learned that Cuba’s dictator, Fulgencio Batista, had fled the country. “It was a gloomy scene. I was scared,” he recalls. “I didn’t know what to expect or what it meant. But it didn’t take long to realize my life was about to change.” Young Mari started boarding school in Mississippi a few months later, and he never lived in Havana again.

Mariano is now 65 years old, and after years of talking about it, he and his son David have returned to Cuba. David grew up in New Orleans and is an expert on the sweets and savory dishes of his hometown, which he re-creates at Bayou Bakery in Arlington, Virginia. Though he made his reputation cooking Creole and Cajun dishes, David’s childhood was filled with traditional Cuban food. “Instead of eating red beans and rice, like everyone else in Louisiana, we had black beans,” he says. “It was important for my father to represent Cuba to us.” Now the father and son have come to Cuba to reconnect with the country through the dishes of their memories.

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