CORDON BLUES My first taste of Cuban food was a good one. I experienced it at the bar of a Quito restaurant nibbling spicy dishes and sipping pokey Cuba Libres. People who could dance danced while I pretended to be absorbed in my thoughts in a place that counted customers in twos. But after sipping continually for three hours, with every drop ringing up an invisible till, I slurped myself into financial liquidation. The bill was around twice the size of my wallet. So I pushed forward pathetically a paltry handful of notes and coins and confessed my immediate shortcomings to the waiter who had been grinning at me happily all evening. I braced myself for the Latin equivalent of a barman’s bitchslap and an unplanned shift of dishwashing. But while his face fell for a
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