Country dossier
Restaurants, hotels, bars and wineries across Cuba in the En Primeur Club guide.
Accolades in Cuba
Havana carries the deepest restaurant list in Cuba, with Old Havana and Vedado offering the clearest read on private dining, hotel rooms, and serious wine programs.
La Guarida in downtown Havana is a Modern Caribbean restaurant with an extensive wine list, and sommelier-led service. It works across à la carte and prix fixe formats, and its historic mansion setting includes a rooftop bar and panoramic city views.
Comedor de Aguiar in Vedado is a luxury Cuban and international dining room with an exceptional wine program and an extensive wine list. Set in the lobby of Hotel Nacional de Cuba, it is a refined room for international dining in Havana.
Paladar Doña Eutimia in Habana Vieja is a traditional Cuban criolla restaurant in a cobblestone alley near Plaza de la Catedral. Its standard wine program sits alongside craft cocktails, and the menu focuses on Cuban home cooking in a narrow alley setting.
These bars show Havana’s range in cocktails and rum, from historic rooms to rooftops and hotel bars.
Floridita in La Habana Vieja is Havana’s reference bar for the daiquiri, with classic cocktails, frozen drinks, and a minimal wine program. Its World's 50 Best Bars results include #31 in 2011 and #40 in North America's Best Bars in 2022.
Malecon in Centro Habana is a rooftop bar set directly on Havana’s seafront promenade, with classic cocktails, rum, and craft cocktails. The setting looks over the Malecón and includes local art and themed events.
Bar Constante in La Habana Vieja is an intimate hotel cocktail bar specialising in classic Cuban rum cocktails with a standard wine program. It belongs to Havana’s smaller cocktail-bar conversation and sits in the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana.
La Casa de La Bombilla Verde in Vedado is a Havana bar serving classic cocktails, rum, and frozen drinks. The room seats 50 people, and a green lantern marks the bar.
These Havana hotels map the capital’s hospitality scene across Vedado and Old Havana, with award-recognised properties and a prominent waterfront landmark.
Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Vedado is a historic landmark hotel with Michelin Selected status and World Luxury Hotel Awards recognition in 2025. Its seafront position and long hospitality history make it a reference point for luxury stays in Havana.
Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana in Old Havana combines Michelin Selected status with a 93.5-point La Liste Top Hotels result in 2026. The property sits on Calle San Rafael in the colonial core and places guests near the city’s densest concentration of landmarks.
Meliá Cohiba in Vedado is a 5-star hotel. Habana Café, the nightclub, recalls Havana in the 1950s. The hotel includes The Level service, and the views take in the sea and the city.
Outside Havana, the list narrows to a resort bar and hotel in Cayo Guillermo, a Trinidad paladar, a Playa paladar, and a cabaret dining room in Ciudad De La Habana.
Playa Luxury Cayo Guillermo is a Cayo Guillermo resort hotel with a 95-point La Liste Top Hotels result in 2026. Its over-the-water villas and private infinity pools define the property.
Bar Cojímar in Cayo Guillermo is a premium lobby bar within a five-star beachfront resort, with classic cocktails, rum, and tequila. The room sits on Acceso a Playa Pilar and offers a refined, tranquil atmosphere.
Restaurante San José in centro historico, Trinidad, is a colonial-style paladar for Cuban and Italian dishes. The room is air-conditioned. Portions are generous. The format is à la carte. Craft cocktails are served with a standard wine program, and live music plays.
La Esperanza in Miramar, Playa is a 1990s-era paladar for authentic Cuban cooking in an old home. Memorabilia fills the house. The format is à la carte. Craft cocktails are poured, and the setting is casual and upscale-casual, with a standard wine program.
Havana has the strongest scene in our guide, with 26 venues. That concentration puts restaurants, bars, hotels, and the country’s only winery into one city, and Havana carries most of the wine-program and dining-room depth in the country.
Serious wine programs cluster in Havana. La Guarida in downtown Havana has a wine list and sommelier-led service, and Comedor de Aguiar in Vedado has an exceptional wine program and an extensive wine list, while Bar Constante and Paladar Doña Eutimia add more standard wine-program options.
Cuba has no Michelin-starred restaurants in our guide. Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Vedado and Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana in Old Havana both hold Michelin Selected status for 2025. Hotel Nacional de Cuba also holds World Luxury Hotel Awards recognition for 2025.
Cayo Guillermo, Trinidad, Playa, and Ciudad De La Habana are the main non-Havana cities in our guide. Cayo Guillermo carries the resort-side hotel and bar stops, Trinidad contributes a focused paladar, and Playa adds one private dining room in Miramar.
By Emmett Haley · Updated October 8, 2026 · Editorial standards
Cuba
Selected entries from the current guide for Cuba.
Havana, Cuba
La Guarida occupies a crumbling Havana mansion on Concordia Street, where the decay is part of the point. The paladares that survived Cuba's economic turbulence long enough to earn Opinionated About Dining recognition represent a different tier of Cuban cooking, one shaped by scarcity, ingenuity, and accumulated technique. Under chef Enrique Nunez, La Guarida has held a place on that list since 2023.
Havana, Cuba
A Vedado fonda operating in the Cuban tradition of no-frills neighbourhood dining, La Paila Fonda on Calle M occupies the kind of corner that regulars find by instinct rather than algorithm. The cooking is rooted in Cuban home-kitchen logic, the pace is set by conversation rather than courses, and the setting is the residential quarter itself rather than any stage-managed version of it.
Havana, Cuba
A Havana address that takes its name from the Lebanese capital, Beirut operates in a city where ingredient sourcing shapes every plate, and where the gap between what a kitchen can obtain and what it can imagine defines the cooking. In a paladares scene built on improvisation and local supply chains, this is a restaurant worth understanding on its own terms before you visit.
Ciudad De La Habana, Cuba
Few entertainment venues in the Caribbean carry the historical weight of Cabaret Tropicana, an open-air spectacle in Havana's Marianao district that has staged elaborate song-and-dance productions since 1939. The format belongs to a tradition of mid-century Latin cabaret that has largely disappeared elsewhere, making this one of the few remaining places where that scale of production survives in its original setting.
Havana, Cuba
Comedor de Aguiar sits in Vedado, a Havana district where hotel dining, private kitchens, and state-run traditions overlap more visibly than in the restored old quarter. The draw is less about chef mythology than context: a lobby address in Plaza La Habana, useful for readers comparing Cuban dining formats across the city.
Havana, Cuba
Confluencias sits on Calle San Rafael in central Havana, a useful address for reading the city’s independent dining culture through supply, improvisation, and proximity to Old Havana’s heavier tourist circuit. The interest is less about ceremony than about how a small Havana room can translate local sourcing pressures into a meal with a clear sense of place.
Havana, Cuba
A fixture on the Habana Vieja backpacker and paladares circuit, El Chanchullero operates on Teniente Rey between Bernaza and El Cristo, pulling in a mix of locals and travelers with its no-frills Cuban cooking and rum-forward drinks list. The address places it within walking distance of several of the city's most-discussed paladares, making it a natural reference point for anyone mapping Havana's independent dining scene.
Havana, Cuba
On the corner of Habana and O'Reilly in Old Havana, El del Frente operates as a rooftop bar and gathering point that has become a reference address for the city's paladares scene. The format is informal, the crowd is mixed, and the setting, refined above street level in Centro Histórico, gives it a distinct position among Havana's licensed private venues. Plan ahead: it fills quickly and walk-ins during peak evening hours are rarely direct.
Havana, Cuba
El Patio occupies one of Havana's most architecturally commanding addresses, facing Plaza de la Catedral in the heart of Old Havana. The setting places it squarely within the tourist-facing tier of Havana dining, where colonial architecture and location do significant work. Visitors consistently flag the courtyard experience and traditional Cuban cooking as the primary draws.
Havana, Cuba
Few addresses in Old Havana carry as much cultural freight as La Bodeguita Del Medio on Empedrado Street. The bar-restaurant occupies the intersection of Cuban food tradition and literary mythology, drawing visitors and locals alike to its wall-scrawled interior for mojitos and creole cooking. It is less a restaurant to be evaluated than a phenomenon to be understood.
Havana, Cuba
La Cocina de Esteban occupies a slice of Vedado's residential fabric, where Havana's paladar tradition translates home cooking into something more considered. Positioned on Calle 21, it operates within a city where private dining rooms have quietly built a parallel restaurant culture to the state sector. Visitors looking for Cuban cooking in a neighbourhood setting rather than a tourist circuit will find this address worth tracking down.
Playa, Cuba
La Esperanza serves authentic Cuban at 105 Calle 16 in Playa, with dinner and late-night service in a casual, upscale-casual setting.
Havana, Cuba
La Paella occupies a corner of Havana's Oficios quarter, where Spanish culinary inheritance and Cuban adaptation have long shared a table. The paella format here connects directly to the Iberian legacy embedded in Cuban cooking, a cuisine shaped by centuries of colonial exchange. For visitors working through Old Havana's dining scene, it offers a grounded reference point within that broader Spanish-Cuban dialogue.
Havana, Cuba
On a stretch of O'Reilly street that has become one of Havana's more consequential dining corridors, O'Reilly 304 draws a crowd that mixes locals with travelers who've done their research. The address has become shorthand in Centro Habana conversations about where the city's independent restaurant scene has arrived, casual in setting, serious in intent, and worth the effort of finding a seat.
Havana, Cuba
On a narrow alley off Plaza de la Catedral, Paladar Doña Eutimia has become one of Havana's most referenced addresses for Cuban home cooking. The menu reads as a document of the island's culinary traditions, from ropa vieja to the kind of black beans that take a full day to prepare correctly. Bookings fill quickly, and the alley setting adds a layer of context that the food itself earns.
Trinidad, Cuba
On a colonial backstreet in Trinidad, Restaurante San José operates within Cuba's paladares tradition, privately run tables where sourcing is shaped by what's available locally rather than what's listed on a menu. For travellers used to fixed formats, it offers something more contingent and, in that contingency, more honest about how food actually moves through a Cuban town.
Havana, Cuba
Positioned on Calle 17 in Vedado, Union Francesa operates within a neighbourhood defined more by residential Havana than the tourist circuit of Old Havana's paladares.
Cuba
Selected entries from the current guide for Cuba.
Havana, Cuba
Hotel Nacional de Cuba sits at the head of Vedado's seafront bluff, a 1930 Beaux-Arts landmark that holds two World Luxury Hotel Awards, Regional Winner for Luxury Heritage Hotel and Continent Winner for Luxury Conference and Event Hotel. Its position in Havana's accommodation tier, above the city's smaller casas particulares and alongside the international-brand competition on the Malecón, makes it the reference point against which most luxury stays in the capital are measured.
Havana, Cuba
Occupying a restored early-20th-century block on Calle San Rafael in Old Havana, Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana earned a 93.5-point score from La Liste's 2026 Top Hotels ranking, placing it among the continent's most recognised addresses. Its position at the intersection of the Prado and the colonial core gives guests immediate access to the city's densest concentration of landmarks, on foot.
Cayo Guillermo, Cuba
Positioned on Acceso a Playa Pilar in Cayo Guillermo, Playa Luxury earns 95 points from La Liste's 2026 Top Hotels ranking, placing it among a small cohort of Caribbean properties recognized at that level. The setting, along one of Cuba's most photographed stretches of coastline, frames an architectural proposition that reads as deliberately understated against the surrounding landscape of white sand and turquoise shallows.
Havana, Cuba
Casa Lilly occupies a address on Avenida de los Presidentes in Havana's Vedado district, placing it within one of the city's most architecturally layered residential corridors. As a paladares-style venue in a neighbourhood that has quietly become a reference point for Havana's private dining scene, it represents the broader shift in Cuban hospitality away from state-run formats toward independently operated tables with distinct character.
Havana, Cuba
On Paseo in Vedado, Hostal Silvia sits within one of Havana's most architecturally layered residential quarters, where mid-century modernism and colonial-era townhouse forms occupy the same block. As a casa particular, it operates inside a hospitality tradition that large international hotels in the city cannot replicate: privately run, physically embedded in neighbourhood life, and structurally distinct from the managed anonymity of the hotel corridor.
Havana, Cuba
Meliá Cohiba occupies a commanding position on Havana's Vedado waterfront, where the Malecón meets the city's most concentrated strip of international-standard accommodation. As one of the tallest structures in the Cuban capital, it offers a reference point for understanding how large-scale hospitality operates within a city where infrastructure and expectation rarely align neatly. For travellers entering Cuba through a recognisable international brand, it remains one prominent address in Vedado.
Cuba
Selected entries from the current guide for Cuba.
Havana, Cuba
Few bars carry the weight of Floridita on Calle Obispo in Havana. Ranked #31 in the World's 50 Best Bars in 2011 and #40 in North America's 50 Best Bars in 2022, it remains the reference address for the daiquiri in its city of origin, a gathering place for locals, tourists, and anyone with a serious interest in where Cuban cocktail culture began.
Cayo Guillermo, Cuba
Bar Cojímar sits on Acceso a Playa Pilar in Cayo Guillermo, a beach-route address that places it closer to Cuba’s resort-island rhythm than to Havana’s historic cocktail rooms.
Havana, Cuba
Bar Constante belongs to Havana’s smaller cocktail-bar conversation rather than the city’s grand daiquiri mythology. Its first-floor address on Calle San Rafael, between Monserrate and Agramonte, places it in the Centro Habana–Old Havana orbit, useful for drinkers comparing modern Cuban bar formats with historic rooms such as Floridita and lower-key neighbourhood stops.
Havana, Cuba
Bay View Bar or Hall of Fame sits in Vedado, Havana’s district of broad avenues, former mansions, hotels, theatres, and late-night rooms. With no published awards, prices, hours, phone, website, or cocktail list in the available record, it is better read as part of Havana’s bar geography than as a credential-led destination.
Havana, Cuba
La Casa de La Bombilla Verde occupies a particular corner of Havana's bar scene where the rum-forward tradition runs deeper than nostalgia. The name, the green light bulb, doubles as a signal: something worth pausing for in a city where particularly compelling bars rarely announce themselves loudly. For visitors working through Havana's drinking culture, this is a reference point rather than a footnote.
Havana, Cuba
La Gruta occupies a subterranean space beneath the Cine La Rampa on Havana's Vedado strip, placing it at the intersection of the city's mid-century cultural life and its contemporary bar scene. The cave-like setting draws a mix of locals and informed visitors looking for atmosphere over spectacle. It belongs to a quieter register of Havana nightlife, distinct from the tourist-facing bravado of the waterfront.
Havana, Cuba
Havana's Malecón seafront promenade is less a destination than a state of mind, the city's outdoor living room, where rum flows from passing bottles and the conversation runs until sunrise. For visitors who read the scene carefully, it frames every bar and spirits experience in the Cuban capital, functioning as the baseline against which Havana's more curated drinking culture measures itself.
Cuba
Selected entries from the current guide for Cuba.
