A New York City restaurant has wiped away its own history after it sought to expand into Florida.
The reason: It boasted that its theme was connected to the most notorious communists in Latin American history.
As the Miami Herald reported Tuesday, the Café Habana was slated to open in Miami this spring. The eatery, whose menu is a mix of Mexican and Cuban dishes, is an offshoot of a diner launched in New York in 1997.
According to the Herald, until recently, the restaurant’s website noted, “Inspired by a storied Mexico City hangout, where legend has it Che Guevara and Fidel Castro plotted the Cuban Revolution, the flagship Café Habana location was created out of an old-school New York diner in 1997. Eighteen years later, Café Habana remains an institution….”
Now, much like countless of Castro’s dissidents, that language has been disappeared.
“In Miami, a city with a huge Cuban ex-pat population, a restaurant that celebrates the plotting of the Cuban Revolution by the two communist leaders and rebrands American cultural icons as communist propaganda can expect pushback,” the Herald noted.
That latter observation was about a painting on the Café Habana website that showed the murdered rapper, Biggie Smalls, as “Comandante Biggie.”
As one example of how this didn’t go over with some locals, the Herald quoted Miami social media favorite Josue Alvarez, who on Instagram posted to Café Habana’s owner, “I’m sorry, Sean Meenan, but here in Miami, there’s two things we don’t accept: communism and gringos making croquetas.”
The Herald noted that other restaurants near the downtown site where Café Habana is supposed to open have routinely faced protests for making light of Castro and his murderous, totalitarian regime.
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