Aliyya Swaby Photo
Wilson Morales mixed, shook and poured a “Papa Hemingway” daquiri, bringing a bit of Havana to Zafra’s Rum Bar — just the way the famed author would have liked it.
Ernest Hemingway forever left his mark on Cuba, and its cocktails, by making a few slight changes to the classic daiquiri. Morales offers customers the chance to put their own imprints on the rum-based drink as he tends bar at the Orange Street Cuban restaurant.
A classic daiquiri is a mix of rum, lime and sugar, served on the rocks. Hemingway’s version keeps the rum and lime, but adds in the bitter ingredients of grapefruit juice and maraschino liqueur.
“I wanted to have it on the menu because of Hemingway’s history in Cuba,” Zafra’s owner Dominick Splendorio said. Hemingway had his own seat at a bar called La Floridita, where he found he had a taste for daiquiris and ordered them regularly. A photo of Hemingway hangs in Zafra’s back room.
In one version of the story, Hemingway stumbled upon La Floridita in Havana while searching for a restroom. He saw everyone drinking daiquiris and ordered one, to taste it.
Hemingway discovered he liked it — but hold the sugar.
“He was also a diabetic — that’s why this cocktail is on the drier side,” Splendorio said.
As the story goes, Hemingway returned to the bar every morning from then on, in the same seat, now reserved as a tourist attraction in Havana today next to a life-size bronze statue of the author.
If Hemingway could find such a memorable way to dress up a daiquiri, then anyone can find their preferred rum drink. Going into his second year tending bar at Zafra, Morales has helped countless patrons to their version of Havana.
“My first question is always: sweet or not sweet?” he said. For complete rum virgins, he asks, “What do you normally drink? Bourbon, vodka, brandy? There are rums close to everything.”
Morales had never worked at a rum bar before Zafra. He came to the country from Ecuador in 2001 at the age of 19, and started bar tending a couple of years later at Italian and Spanish restaurants in New York. The back and forth exchange of recipe ideas makes his job worthwhile, he said.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who come, it changes their mentality of rum completely,” he said.