Post #771390 by AceExplorer on Thu, Dec 22, 2016 12:32 PM

Mike, thanks for busting my chops, ha!

Mike, they used Havana Club light, and they blend the drink til it's slushy. Their lime flavor is very subtle and balanced, and the drink amazingly lacks the tartness of my at-home concoctions using Persian limes. They also use a bit of Cuban maraschino liqueur. There are recipes, and a video, online purporting to be original from the Floridita. The video is at http://www.liquor.com/video/curbside-cocktails-daiquiri/ and other than possibly showing double the actual amount of lime juice in the real Floridita drink, it's a very good guide. I would expect a little obfuscation in such a video from the restaurant itself.

Their technique is to load up ice, squirt in pre-mixed lime/maraschino/simple syrup from a bottle, start the blender and then free-pour silver rum until a vortex forms inside the blender. When you make thousands of these, you learn to free-pour and master the art of looking for visual cues when to stop in the blender.

The end result is simply sublime. I could have sat there and drank myself into a pleasant stupor. It made me want to immediately experiment at home in an effort to re-create their pleasant concoction.

I had my photo taken with the server who brought our drinks. He was classic "old-school Havana"-looking with a big smile. The Cuban band in the corner was a blast too. The place was packed, and they have a Floridita merchandise store in the corner with cigar and cigarette ash trays, hats, key fobs, and black Floridita-embroidered aprons. Christmas season meant the whole restaurant was decorated.

I saw the place a second time, but after it closed, sometime around 1am in the morning as I stumbled, er, walked, the 4 miles back to the ship from the Polinesio. I highly recommend getting lost in Havana - it's safe and fun, lively, invigorating, and you can practice your Spanish with the people you run into. But that's another story entirely. And yes, I intentionally chose NOT to take a cab and walk back after my night at Polinesio. I'm very glad I chose to walk - I saw a ton of neat people and things they do at night - and I could have taken a cab at any time. Cuban life is arguably better in some ways because they don't have TVs, PCs, X-Box, etc.

I wanna go back. I think about this trip every day. This was truly memorable!

[ Edited by: AceExplorer 2016-12-22 12:50 ]