Lola Mento, the popular social media character created by Cuban actress Danay Cruz Estupiñán, published a video in which she enthusiastically reviews the restaurant "La Mesa Pelá," located at the prime address of "Fanguero Ocho, between Charco Hondo and Cuneta 4," in Guasimita. The restaurant opens every day from around noon until the mosquitera starts.
The sketch, lasting just one minute and seven seconds, is a satire as sharp as the knife that has nothing left to cut in Cuba: each dish on the fictional menu is an exact reflection of the food crisis the island is facing.
Lola Mento arrived with the "dry gargueros" and immediately requested a "base of everything," referring to the way President Miguel Díaz-Canel mentioned lemon, which has since become a source of mockery among Cubans. The drink offered to her, which came at the modest price of three thousand pesos, turned out to be made with instant soda Zuco, "because here there's hardly any lemon left," Lola explained with the same ease as a sommelier describing a Chardonnay.
As an appetizer, he was thrilled with a noni ceviche, which he rated a perfect ten out of ten, although he admitted that "it only cost the 6,000 pesos I earned this month." One dish, one salary. The perfect equation of contemporary Cuban cuisine.
For the main course, she ordered a beef steak, but the chef surprised her with a "deconstruction" of it: a plate of moringa. "In the end, it's the same and that's not up for debate, because that's what the chef said," explained Lola Mento, with the resignation of someone who already knows that the Cuban government has been promoting this plant as a protein substitute through the National Moringa Program, driven by the agricultural delusions of former dictator Fidel Castro.
The accompanying rice was also notably missing. Instead, they brought her "something very Cuban that is currently trending in our cuisine": a cable! And Lola Mento claimed to have been "impressed by the quality of the dish." The reference to the scarcity of rice, a traditional staple food on the Island, does not need translation.
According to economist Pedro Monreal, the total availability of rice for consumption in the country fell by 41.5% between 2005 and 2023, with the latter year representing the most recent official figures released.
To wrap up the succulent dinner at La Mesa Pelá, the dessert: "a false pudding, and I say false because it had nothing to do with milk and eggs," Lola complained. Two basic ingredients that have been missing from Cuban tables for years.
"But what was real was the bill," the charming Holguin peasant warned before putting on some waterproof boots and heading out for a 10-kilometer ride to avoid paying.
After the laughter from the video, there comes the bittersweet taste of its realism. Zuco instead of lemon, moringa as meat, the noni promoted by the state media as an almost miraculous supplement, the absence of rice, milk, and eggs, and prices that equate to full salaries are the everyday reality of an island where 96.91% of the population lost access to food due to inflation and one in four people goes to bed without dinner. Or they simply eat "a wire."
Lola Mento's tagline says it all: "Comment on the menu and I'll send you the letter." The restaurant doesn't exist, but the menu does.
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