When you order a mojito at Guantanamera, the bartender does not scowl at you. She deftly muddles the classic trio - lime quarters, mint, and sugar - adds rum, shakes it all over ice, tops it with soda water, and delivers you a boozy highball in 60 seconds flat, about a quarter of the time that it usually takes to get a martini in this town.
The mojito is not a pretty cocktail, nor should it be. It is not clean, like so many of today's perfectly emulsified, overwrought tipples, strained through wire mesh with the same urgency that a French chef might bring to clarifying veal stock. The drink's deep flavors comes from all the pounding, prodding, and shaking of previously attractive ingredients. Drifts of smashed lime and bruised mint float about in what looks like a glass of cloudy pond water.
Some sips of Guantanamera's mojito taste heavily of rum. Others taste of mint that's more grassy than sweet. Still others taste of lime that's more pithy than bright. A splinter of sugar cane floats near the top; you can chew on it like a toothpick if the alcohol ever gets too heavy. Polish off the beverage and what remains is not an empty glass, but a slipshod terrarium of verdant refuse and fibrous, molar-marked cane stalk.
This is what you drink while eating Guantanamera's grilled squid; the meat of the charred mollusks as slick and creamy as the garlic sauce they sit in. The mojito is what you drink when the house band, Gerardo Contino y los Habaneros, starts up its set near the back of the room each night. They play until just before midnight, but the bar stays open until 1. Order one drink, then order another.
Guantanamera sits on a stretch of Eighth Avenue that was as unhip in 2005, when it opened, as it is now. The restaurant's red rectangular awning, which extends all the way out to the curb so patrons can catch a cab without getting wet, is more faded than La Grenouille's. A glass-enclosed display on the sidewalk outside alerts passers-by to the restaurant's deals and musical acts. The contents of the display rarely change. The menu doesn't change at all.
I learned of Guantanamera's existence not by way of a magazine or a friend or an Instagram power user, but rather by walking past. It's a block and a half from my apartment, in a slice of Midtown West that's not quite Columbus Circle, and not quite Hell's Kitchen. I lived nearby for over a year before stepping through the door, and when I finally did drop by it wasn't because I was looking for a place to review, or because I was looking for an excuse to opine on the resumption of American flights to Havana after a fifty-year hiatus. I started dining at Guantanamera because I left the office late one night and didn't feel like Citibiking up to P.J. Clarke's for a burger. It was nearby, and I was hungry. I walked in after 10pm, and the place was packed.
Guantanamera is unhip, but that doesn't mean it's uncrowded: the bar can fill up 'til closing time on weekday nights. If you want a table on a Saturday, you'd better have a reservation. Patrons — some of them in glittery dresses, others in t-shirts and shorts — pick away at maduros (sweet plantains), tostones (savory plantains), all sipping at mojitos (classic, or frozen and laced with coconut). A few guests watch sports on the flatscreen mounted over the bar; most direct their attention to the back of the restaurant, where the five-piece band on a small elevated stage is playing — and this a song you'll naturally hear every night here — Guantanamera, Cuba's most passionate patriotic hymn.
Guantanamera is unhip, but that doesn't mean it's uncrowded: the bar can fill up 'til closing time on weekday nights.
As I'm digging into chorizo in garlic broth one Saturday, the bandleader breaks out his flute for a four-minute solo and the crowd, which boasts a diversity of age and ethnicity rarely seen in a restaurant in, say, fashionable Soho or Williamsburg, erupts in applause. Can you remember the last time you saw a group of people go completely cronuts over a flute solo? It happens here, in a restaurant with worn yellow walls decked with patriotic murals of palm trees, bananas, farmers, and musicians.
There's no dance floor, but people dance.
If you order correctly, you'll find that the kitchen puts out some of the city's most notable Cuban fare, particularly when it comes to the array of beef dishes on offer—at least eleven by my count, from picadillo (ground beef with olives and raisins) to palomilla (thinly sliced beef round with onions), as well as excellent pinchos, skewers of steak marinated in mojo sauce, a mixture of oregano, garlic, onion, and lime. What cut of the cow does the meat on the pinchos come from? "It depends," says a manager. "It's mixed."
Though the classic cubano sandwich may have originated in America, Guantanamera's rendition is perfect: It bears a thin, almost unnoticeable slice of ham which essentially functions to provide color contrast to the main event: musky hunks of slow-cooked pork, spilling out over the edges of chewy baguette that's been pressed and crisped on the griddle. Pickles cleanse the palate, but then again, so does the mojito.
I'd happily tell you about the chef, whose menu pays homage to the diversity of Cuban cuisine, which draws from Spanish, African, Taino, and Caribbean fare. Just one problem: She or he isn't mentioned on the menu, or on any of the restaurant's promotional material. But I can tell you about Juan de la Cruz, a man who's prominently featured on Guantanamera's website, and who's the first person you'll see in the restaurant on a Friday or Saturday. He's not the host. He's not the bartender. He is, by his own description, a "professional Cuban cigar expert," and he sits by the window and uses what he assures his customers is Dominican tobacco to roll what the restaurant describes as "complimentary baby fat stogies for customers who want to savor a sidewalk smoke reminiscent of the days of the Montecristo and Romeo y Julieta of 1950s Havana."
De la Cruz, bald and lean, is a man of precision. He wears a crisply laundered button-down and rimmed glasses. His hands move across his workspace without ambivalence; watching him manipulate tobacco is no less mesmerizing than watching a master sushi chef mold nigiri. He eyeballs the binder leaf and shapes it down to size with a circular caveta knife. He adds filler leaves, rolls them up, snips off the wayward end with a table cutter, and places the aromatic cylinders in a wooden press for shaping. The finished products sit by the anteroom window like a pile of aromatically incendiary Lincoln Logs. Is there any other culinary establishment that gives out nicotine products, and that advertises this policy in public documents in post-smoking-ban New York?
Guantanamera is not a food-person restaurant. It's a third space — somewhere that isn't home but isn't work — but not the kind with free wifi; there's no one writing code on her MacBook Air. It's a venue where half the bar seats are reserved by drinkers smoking outside (some of whom are drinking outside too), where patrons watch the game while eating a dinner that's not chicken wings, where guests salsa even though there's no dance floor, where live music plays without the requirement of a cover charge. Guantanamera is a place to hang out without the constant pressure to order another $15 cocktail, though you'll certainly want to. It is a social club without the membership or the mafia. Walk by during brunch, and you'll see a guy beating out some tunes on the bata drums by the open windows, his drums the colors of the Cuban flag.
"That's a dry dish," I hear a waiter say when a patron attempts to order the vaca frita. The diner balks, and opts for mozzarella stuffed chicken instead. Really. Don't let the staffers discourage you from one of Cuba's signature beef dishes. Vaca frita ("fried beef") is cooked skirt steak that's been shredded, seasoned with mojo, and re-crisped on the griddle. The result is something like warm, tender jerky, with a musk so beefy and powerful it's delivered with a wedge of lemon or lime. Matched with the traditional rice and beans, it's easily a one-plate meal for two. Same goes for the picadillo, a big pile of raisin- and olive-studded ground beef with an egg on top, and the ropa vieja, the iconic dish of slow-simmered flank steak and peppers that's tender as cotton candy.
There's no dance floor, but people dance.
The palomilla steak is tempting; at its best, the preparation involves tenderizing a cheap cut of top round by slicing it thin, marinating it in lime and garlic, and quickly cooking it over high heat to a sizzling crispness. But what the kitchen puts out here is just a thin, underseasoned, overcooked steak. Chicken Guantanamera, by contrast, is excellent: a crispy half bird drenched in a world of garlic sauce. Lechon asado (slow-cooked pork) exhibits the type of soft flesh and heady aroma that can keep hunger at bay through a one-hour rumba set, or longer. It arrives with boiled cassava, drenched in garlic butter.
Guantanamera is proof that there's still a rich restaurant world beyond those glittery places with PR campaigns or viral Instagram love, that those restaurants can find ways to remain crowded ten years after opening. It's also a great place to get a mojito and a filling meal. And for me, at least, it's a reminder of how nice it is to find a restaurant the old fashioned way: by walking around the block, stepping into a crowded space you've never heard of, and feeling right at home.
Ryan Sutton is Eater's chief restaurant critic. Read more of his reviews in the archive.