Havana Entertainment Guide

Havana has by far the best eating choices in all of Cuba. The best restaurants are part of the city's posh hotels: they take dollar payments and feature spruced up menus, ambience and fairly high-quality meals. The cuisines on offer are Chinese, Italian, Turkish, Spanish and French. Most also have a fairly good breakfast buffet going.

For a quick bite you can choose between a café (state-run) and privately run peso stalls that dot the streets of Centro Habana and Vedado. The quality of the cafes varies. While some, definitely those in the more touristy areas, are clean and bright and offer a selection that includes sandwiches, burgers, fries, batter-fried chicken and hot dogs, there are others that are dismally grubby. You won't find any Cuban food at these since rice and bean soup isn't fast food at all. At the peso stalls you will find maize fritters, sweets and other typically Cuban titbits.

Privately run paladares are another option. The food is always good and here's a chance for the visitor to get a taste of Cuban home cooked food. Restrictions such as the prohibition on beef and seafood apply to these places, which are also not allowed to let in more than 12 customers at a time. But those who run these are invariably accommodating people and will bend a few rules whenever possible. So you may place a special request for items that are not on the menu; vegetarians may ask for all-veg meals, and seafood buffs can try their luck.

Havana shakes it hips to the rhythms of salsa every night. There are discotheques galore where you can tank up on rum (joy!) and be handed a fat bill (killjoy), even as the floor jumps to last year's big single. Discos are perhaps the least thrilling of Havana's entertainment options. Live music clubs or casas de la trova are the place to be if you enjoy salsa, bolero, son or jazz. You'll find many in Habana Vieja and Vedado, which are among the most atmospheric districts of Havana. Check the local listings, Cartelera, to see if the Buena Vista Social Club is performing while you're there. They're the big daddies of Cuban music. Keep a lookout for cabaret shows hosted often by the big hotels. Die-hard street partiers can join local revellers on the Malecón with their own bottles of rum or beer.

Cinemas and the theatre (casa de la cultura) are popular forms of entertainment in Havana. Theatre especially is often of high quality. The cinemas screen Cuban, European and Hollywood movies - non-Spanish movies are usually either subtitled in Spanish or dubbed. Cuban cinema is spectacularly high on action and event and though you might not get the dialogue, you should be able to follow the story. Video parlours called salas de video also screen films. The Havana ballet company is based in the Gran Teatro in Habana Vieja. They have two seasons in the year, one in the summer and the other in winter.