A red and yellow billboard on 23rd Street, in Havana’s Vedado, draws attention to some new works in the capital. “Attention, street P closed, go through O,” it says in capital letters, turning the passerby’s gaze on the workers who, on P street, where the old Moscow restaurant is located, set up a fence early this Friday.
The residents of the place, who have been complaining for decades about the ruin in which the place is located, a breeding ground for mosquitoes and rats, watched with amazement what repair works would be if it were not for the sign on the corner of Humboldt Street that clearly warns of the objective of the work: “Hotel under construction”.
Some time ago, in the face of citizen complaints and denunciations, the authorities communicated their intentions to demolish the premises, arguing that the deterioration caused by the raging fire that destroyed it in 1989, added to the years of total abandonment, made it impossible to save the construction.
Later, they presented on official television the plan to preserve the existing underground parking lot and tear down the main structure to build a hotel there.
Throughout its history, the site had various uses. After being a dairy, it was, in the 1920s, the first cynodrome in Havana. Later, in the 40s, they built the luxurious Cabaret Montmartre. With two bars and a casino, it was open every evening every day and live music was played on its stage.
The most famous stars of the time paraded through the Frenchified nightclub: the Mexican Agustín Lara, the Spanish Lola Flores and, of course, the Cubans Benny Moré, Olga Guillot or Rita Montaner. The chronicles tell that in its lavish halls, in 1947, Frank Sinatra cut a large cake to celebrate his wedding with Ava Gardner.
Antonio Blanco Rico, head of Furgencio Batista’s Military Intelligence Service, was also killed in an attack there.
With the coming to power of Fidel Castro, the business was intervened and became a workers’ canteen. In the 1960s it became the Moscow restaurant, just when the regime became a satellite of the USSR, with a menu of Russian specialties. One of its emblematic dishes was, in fact, the solyanka, a soup made with abundant pieces of meat.
“An uncle of mine was captain of one of the halls of the Moscow,” says Sandra, a 45-year-old from Havana, who remembers the place from what her relative told her. “My sister and I loved going over a book, printed in the USSR, with all the details of the restaurant. Through its pages we even learned the differences between a knife for meat and another for butter,” she details, amused.
When it was under repair one weekend in 1989, a fire that started on the ground floor of the restaurant ended up destroying the entire place, as if it were a foreboding event. Shortly after, the Soviet Union would disappear.
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