Bar Monserrate

Address: Avenida de Belgica at Obrapia, Havana, Cuba
Door: Open door
Style: Music bar
Food: Tapas/plates & dishes

Review

Whatever day of the week you turn up to Bar Monserrat, the atmosphere feels like a party. If you saw this in a movie, you'd think it was contrived, but here it's genuine: under harsh lighting there's music and dancing, magicians and other entertainers wandering among the customers, a pre-requisite elderly Cuban man sucking on fat cigars, and a huge guy, a boxer the rest of the time, manning the door. The high-ceilinged one-room bar, complete with ornamental coving that suggests an earlier glamour, is open to the outside, with huge steel shutters rolled up to let the breeze in.

Sit on simple wooden chairs underneath slowly turning ceiling fans and desk-top fans crudely attached to the walls. The bar has a selection of somewhat dusty bottles on the back-bar, but it's clear that most people are drinking Daiquiris and Mojitos - they line the latter up on the bar, rough stalks of mint, lime juice and sugar awaiting soda and rum, hardly the stuff of finesse, but it's hot and you're having a great time. 3/5