Winter in Michigan seems to go on way too long and I keep find myself thinking “Is it mojito season yet”? Though I’m afraid we’re probably still far from warm weather, it did get me thinking again about Aruba. Two nights after our wedding we were looking for a restaurant ‘off the beaten path’. I think I had read about “Cuba’s Cookin’” online, and my husband had been wanting to try Cuban food. So, iPhone in hand, we made our way downtown. Unfortunately the iPhone’s google map was a little confused so it took us a little while to find it. This place is definitely out of the way and we were under the impression it was in sort of a sketchy part of town. That actually made it all the more intriguing to us, being out of ‘tourist central’…

The place is adorable and almost kitschy, with its walls loaded with Cuban photos and artifacts. We were also pleasantly surprised to find they had live entertainment though we weren’t surprised the mojitos were great! To date, the best mojitos we have had have been at the Jules Verne Restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland which is housed in the dome of an old basilica and at Kokob, an Ethiopian restaurant in Brussels, Belgium of all places. Its made us wonder if using real Cuban rum makes the difference. In fact, our guests had purchased some Cuban rum to use in ‘pre-party cocktails’ back in their rooms. You gotta love a little contra-band! =) Sorry to digress.

Anyway – the music was great – a duo played the guitar and sang cuban songs. The food was good and well priced. And had my aunt and uncle not have joined us, I probably would have thrown back 4or 5 of those mojitos! Which brings me to another reason for this write-up – I just stumbled across an online coupon for a free mojito or Cuba Libre on the Nights Aruba website! You can also see Cuba’s Cookin’ featured on the Aruba.com website.