The Habana Libre is in the Vedado district of Havana which is very much one of the cultural quarters of the city - Havana University is there as are some of the museums etc and a couple of good music venues but I don't know it that well in terms of what's on offer of an evening for food. But whatever you do you must visit Coppelia, which is a national chain but the one in Vadado is probably the biggest ice cream parlour I've ever seen and definitely the one with the biggest queues of people waiting to get in! This is where Habaneros go to celebrate birthdays and anything else that is a good excuse for having ice cream.

However, a bit further west in Miramar I have eaten at the following restaurant

http://www.cuba-restaurants-guide.com/restaurants/havana/el_aljibe.htm

Not at the bottom end of the Cuban price range but held in high regard for the quality of its 'comida criolla', that is its traditional Cuban food. If you want to try authentic local food it is probably one of the best places to taste it outside of a Cuban home. It is located in a large suburban villa but as restaurants go it is actually quite small with a pleasant leafy open air dining 'room' under a vine laden pergola. I was taken there for dinner on a small group tour and we invited our guide and driver to join us and it was clear that eating there was a real treat for them, saying that the chicken was almost as good as their mothers' which is the highest of compliments from a Cuban man :-)

But the best quality and value food in Cuba is nearly always to be found in the 'paladares' - privately run small restaurants operating in people's own homes. They can come and go quite frequently - think of them as 'pop-up' restaurants - and the only real way of finding out which are currently the best is to ask around once you arrive.

In the opposite direction - eastwards into the Vieja district - you'll find no end of places to eat. Again by Cuban standards the outdoor cafes in the places like the Plaza Neuvo or on Obispo will be towards the top end of the Cuban price scale but on the whole even they won't be that expensive by our standards. On the whole Cuban food outside of the tourist hotels can be fairly basic and carb heavy wherever you eat and a lot of the time the prices reflect the location of the bar/restaurant and the ambience rather than the quaility of the food.

SM

As always, our Cuban "Guru" SMa has excellent advice...

ATB,J.