Bartenders and maître d’s trained in schools such as the Hotel Sevilla or La Ferminia return to oblivion or exile, dragging with them the lost legacy of Cuban cocktail making and hospitality.
14ymedio, José A. Adrián Torres, Malaga (Spain), 21 June 2025 — In Cuba, there was a time when serving well was an art. Not a mechanical gesture or a hollow formula, but a form of dignity: serving with elegance, speaking with restraint, presenting a cocktail with precision and courtesy. That art was gradually lost after the 1959 Revolution, marginalized by ideological prejudices that associated professional hospitality with the bourgeois and the foreign.
Decades later, with the rise of tourism in the 1990s, the island attempted to recover this invisible heritage. Hospitality schools retrained service professionals, historic bars were restored, and, with discretion, many anonymous workers restored Cuba to an international standard of hospitality. But today, this rebirth is in danger: the crisis, the exodus, and the lack of succession once again jeopardize the art of serving.
This is a story of loss, recovery, and perhaps, new forgetting.
A shared history: from Ribalaigua and Chicote to the Creole soul of the cocktail
The art of serving—like the art of mixing rum and lime with precision—didn’t come to Cuba through tourism or foreign investment. It was part of its tradition. In the 1920s and 1930s, Havana was one of the world’s epicenters of cocktail making. At El Floridita, a Spanish immigrant with a Cuban heart named Constante Ribalaigua perfected the daiquiri as if it were a work of liquid engineering, creating the famous daiquiri frappé. In Madrid, Perico Chicote founded the bar that would bear his name and which would eventually be considered the world’s first “cocktail museum.”
The two met. They shared ideas, recipes, and even a trip to Varadero in the 1950s to visit the Arechabala distillery, the birthplace of Havana Club rum. The friendship between Chicote and Ribalaigua was more than a professional gesture: it symbolized a brotherhood between two mutually admired bartending cultures. In his recipe books — My 500 Cocktails and The Wet Law — Chicote included versions of the mojito and the daiquiri, helping to preserve Cuban recipes even when ingredients and bartenders — in plain English, or cantineros, in Spanish — became scarce on the island.
This hybrid tradition—Creole in its roots, Spanish in its method—survived for decades in manuals, in technical gestures, in the way of twisting a lemon peel or presenting a wine list. It was this imprint that inspired, in the 1990s, an attempt to recover lost excellence: recovering cocktails wasn’t about importing a foreign fad, but rather about rediscovering the best of themselves.
The rebirth of good service: Hotel Sevilla, La Ferminia, and the discreet masters
When tourism returned to Cuba in the 1990s, it wasn’t enough to restore facades and fill menus with rum and lobster. Something more difficult was needed: recovering the dignity of service, the art of providing good service, lost after decades of neglect and official disdain. It was then that hospitality schools re-emerged—with state support, international agreements, and a great deal of individual commitment—especially those at the Sevilla Hotel and La Ferminia in Havana.
The Sevilla Hotel’s Tourism Training School (Formatur), active since 1969, had quietly survived, training generations of waiters and bartenders for formal events, embassies, and official events. Its classrooms taught much more than techniques: they taught a code of composure, precision, and courtesy that contrasted with the neglect prevailing in many sectors. There, service was spoken of as a culture, not as servitude.
Something similar happened at La Ferminia, a former mansion belonging to the wealthy Montalvo family, converted into a state culinary school under the name “Sergio Pérez.” It trained chefs, waiters, and maîtres d’s who would later work at the Council of State, the Convention Center, or in restaurants designated by the government to serve heads of state and distinguished visitors. The standard was high. Many former students still remember with respect the meticulousness of their instructors, their careful presentation, their mastery of languages, and their attention to detail.
From these centers emerged the professionals who would restore Cuba to an international standard of hospitality, especially in emblematic establishments such as El Floridita, La Bodeguita del Medio, the bar at the Hotel Nacional, and the now legendary Café del Oriente, a symbol of the restoration of Havana’s historic center.
And among all these professionals, maître d’ Dionisio Hernández holds a special place. Since arriving in Havana in the 1960s, he worked in numerous iconic restaurants and cabarets—from El Encanto and the Paradise Club to the 1830 and the Tropicana—where he rose from clerk to maître d’. In 1972, he joined the Sevilla Hotel School as a trainer and later joined La Ferminia, where he also served as assistant director of Gastronomic Services. A key figure in the Café del Oriente protocol team, he was responsible for serving state figures—including monarchs, such as the former King of Spain—with quiet, unpretentious elegance. He wasn’t celebrated, nor did he receive any revolutionary merit, but those who trained under his guidance remember him as a true master: for what he taught without raising his voice. Even after his retirement in 2005, he continued to teach at Café del Oriente until 2018.
Like him, many anonymous professionals silently maintained what the system failed to appreciate: the art of attention to detail, of the proper greeting, of a well-poured glass, of a well-explained dish or dessert, of respect for the customer as a guest. Without them, the rebirth of the 1990s would have been a mere facade.
A new blackout: apathy, exodus, and the loss of a legacy
That renaissance of the 1990s, so labored over by discreet figures and institutions that revived the tradition of good service, is beginning to fade again today, the victim of a bitter cocktail: the economic crisis, the collapse of tourism, and the disenchantment of those who professionally sustained it for decades.
It is enough to walk through the rooms of yesteryear to notice the difference. At Café del Oriente—once a beacon of elegance, impeccable service, and the setting for official receptions—today, both customers and trained professionals are scarce. The schools no longer retain the best. Iconic bars survive more out of nostalgia than excellence. And the bartenders and maîtres d’s who once learned to serve kings now wait in lines at consulates or dream of Yuma.
The term is popular on the island: to go to Yuma means to leave the country, to seek one’s fortune in the United States or any other place where the craft has value. Many self-employed workers in the restaurant sector, who once opened small private restaurants, signature bars, or cafes with carefully crafted cocktails, have had to close or reinvent themselves with the bare minimum. Others haven’t even had that option: they emigrated. The dignity of service cannot be eaten, especially when everything else is missing.
In Cuba, serving with care is no longer taught as it once was. Or it is taught, but with resignation, knowing that those who know how to do it well are probably already thinking of leaving. And what was once a symbol of national culture—the impeccable bartender, the elegant waiter, the invisible and efficient maître d’— is once again left out of the official narrative. As if it didn’t matter.
And yet, it matters. It matters because the art of serving is also a form of mutual respect, of civility, of memory. Because Cuba was great not only for its cocktails or its flavors, but for the way it presented them. Because attentive service is also a cultural heritage, and losing it—once again—is letting a country die that could still have proudly served its best drink.
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