Journey inside the kitchen of celebrity chef Luis Ramón Batlle, an ambassador for Cuban cuisine. While U.S. sanctions impact the availability and cost of food, Chef Batlle says there is a silver lining: forcing creativity. “You become a magician, an inventor,” he says. 

Batlle was part of the first delegation of Cuban chefs to visit the U.S. during the Obama opening. “It changed my life,” he says. But things changed when Trump became president. Cuban food culture, which was flourishing during normalization, has taken a hit from sanctions and other restrictions imposed by Trump and Biden. It is harder for Cuban chefs to travel to the United States, there are fewer visitors to Cuba and food is scarcer than ever.

TRANSCRIPT

Liz Oliva:

Luis Ramón Batlle is not just a chef, he’s a celebrity. And he’s cooked for many famous people, including Gordon Ramsey. He’s traveled around the world, from Italy to China, learning new styles of cooking. But he learned Cuban cuisine from home, with his grandma, and has become an ambassador of Cuban food.

Luis!

Luis Ramón Battle

Liz, nice to meet you.

Liz Oliva:

A pleasure to meet you. Luis. Thank you very much for agreeing to the interview.

Luis Ramón Battle

It’s my pleasure.

Liz Oliva

What are we doing here?

Luis Ramón Battle

I like to come to the market in the mornings and pick out the products I’ll use to cook that day.

Liz Oliva

Which of these ingredients are characteristic of Cuban cuisine?

Luis Ramón Batlle

I’ll tell you the most essential ingredients. You have to have some cachucha pepper. It’s an aromatic pepper that has a very particular flavor.

Liz Oliva

What do you use it on?

Luis Ramón Battle

You can use it to cook black beans, rice, Cuban rice and beans, which is known world-wide, red beans too, anything really. Another essential ingredient that I love, that my mom loved to cook with: cumin. She used to say that if food didn’t have cumin,it was lacking a special flavor.

Liz Oliva

Delicious. When I hear cumin, my first thought is beans.

Luis Ramón Battle

You like beans?

Liz Oliva

I love them. What are we cooking today?

Luis Ramón Battle

I’m going to surprise you today.

Liz Oliva

Really? Surprise me, I like that.

Cooking in Cuba is a challenge not only for a normal family, but also for a chef.

Luis Ramón Battle

Look at these little onions. These are times to be practical and creative. There’s no other choice.

Liz Oliva

What do you do about that?

Luis Ramón Battle

Food recycling. Making the most of it, that’s what we’re doing. For example, you might have leftover rice from the previous day. So, you mix it with mayonnaise and make a rice salad. You have to be creative. I always say that the biggest problems teach people. That’s important. If you know that

vegetables and fruit peels have vitamins and minerals, and that they are healthy, then use them.

Liz Oliva

Food shortages and inflation are two of the major challenges that Luis Batlle has to face. Despite of that, his food at La Calesa Real restaurant is world-renowned.

Luis Ramón Battle

Welcome to my kitchen, Liz.

Liz Oliva

Thank you so much. It’s my pleasure. What are we cooking today?

Luis Ramón Battle

We’re going to make something very Cuban. That’s the idea. So, what do you think if today I teach you how to make an authentic ropa vieja?

Cuban cuisine at its essence is a mixture of enslaved people with Spaniards, with Haitians… For example, corn, tamales, they come from Mexico, Africa, Haiti… From Spain we get soups, Galician broths.

Let’s lower the heat a little bit. And then what are we going to do? We are going to add a very, very important ingredient.

Liz Oliva

Where does your love for cooking come from?

Luis Ramón Battle

My mother wanted me to be a lawyer. Because that’s what most of my family is. My nephews are now lawyers. So, that’s what she wanted, but I would always end up in the kitchen. My grandma would throw me out of the kitchen and I would just hide and then stop by and taste what she was making. So, one way or another, I was always around the kitchen.

The task of feeding others and doing it right is a responsibility. I think my mom, from heaven, is happy with what I do, because I’m defending Cuban cuisine wherever I go.

Liz Oliva

Why Cuban cuisine?

Luis Ramón Battle

Because that’s my cuisine, it’s my land, it’s the place where I was born. What can I say? My flag is always with me, it goes wherever I go. I like to fuse Cuban cuisine. What I mean is mixing our authentic cuisine with ingredients that might appeal to others. For example, pork pieces with mango sauce, caramel ribs with guava or tamarind. As technology and flavors evolve, Cuban cuisine has grown, despite the scarcities and the difficulties of finding food.

Liz Oliva

Do you think scarcity and crisis have had an impact on Cuban cuisine?

Luis Ramón Battle

Yes, they have a negative and a positive impact. Negative because it makes it hard to dream and to do things the way you would like. But the positive part is that it makes you creative. You become a magician, an inventor, just to be able to make things work.

Liz Oliva

What smells remind you of your childhood?

Luis Ramón Battle

My mother making chicken with potatoes on Sundays. We would bathe on the coast and when we came back that’s what she would make, with black beans and sweet plantains. Another smell I never forget are torrejas (french toast).

Liz Oliva

Do you prefer eating or cooking?

Luis Ramón Battle

Honesty, eating.

Liz Oliva

Your favorite ingredients?

Luis Ramón Battle

I like cumin. I always use it because of my grandma. I like garlic. It’s always in my recipes. I love garlic paste.

Liz Oliva

Well, you said you like eating more than cooking, so, let’s taste that ropa vieja.

Luis Ramón Battle

Let’s serve it. You can smell it.

Liz Oliva

It smells delicious.

Luis Ramón Battle

So, this is the ropa vieja that I promised.

Liz Oliva

Which moment would you say was the best for Cuban cuisine?

Luis Ramón Battle

Cuban cuisine has had good moments, but in the sense of tourism and exposure, it has to be during

Obama’s administration.

Liz Oliva

In recent history then.

Luis Ramón Battle

Yes. Because people from all over the world came here, they were in our restaurants. And we even went to the U.S., the first delegation of chefs representing Cuba to do that. We went to a convention

of chefs in Orlando.

Liz Oliva

The first ever?

Luis Ramón Battle

The first ever.

Liz Oliva

Wow. How was that? That first visit of a group of Cuban chefs to the U.S.?

Luis Ramón Battle

In a way, it changed my life. Because I got to experience a new world. A world I wanted to know and that is very different from ours. I learned about technology. I saw products I had never even imagined existed. That opens your mind to keep working and bring that experience to Cuba.

Liz Oliva

Are those cultural exchanges still happening nowadays?

Luis Ramón Battle

In a more limited way. There are barriers for chefs to go to the U.S. It’s very hard. For example, I’m currently renewing my appointment for the five-year visa. I’ve been invited to several events in the U.S., yet I have to go to a third country to process that visa, which would be a lot easier to do here at the Havana embassy, like I did during Obama.

Liz Oliva

What impact did the normalization of relationshave for Cuban cuisine,for your restaurant?

Luis Ramón Battle

Economically, the country recovered. Tourism is important for the restaurant business. We were improving economically. The economy allowed us to have all the ingredients we needed. That’s what tourism does. The taxi driver makes more money, hotels make more money, restaurants make more money.

Liz Oliva

How is it now?

Luis Ramón Battle

Unfortunately, after Covid, our food culture suffered incredibly. When Donald Trump took over, things really changed in Cuba. They put us on the sponsors of terrorism list. All the doors practically closed. We still have our cuisine because Cubans are food magicians, and many restaurants are open. We now have more small businesses too, but the increase in prices is tremendous. That affects everything, not only medicines, but if we’re talking about food, the products are simply not accessible.

Liz Oliva

Why do you keep on cooking? Why not do something else?

Luis Ramón Battle

Because this is what I love. All that goes through my mind is to continue defending Cuban cuisine, even in these hard times. To keep fighting for it, to keep putting a piece of my heart, my affection and my creativity into cooking, to look for alternatives and solutions. That’s all we can do.