Two years after President Barack Obama announced the opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba, the evident abundance of information, food for sale, and entrepreneurial prosperity hit a high-water mark. Until this trip in the summer of 2016, Marco Polo, a spice store that the Historian of the City of Havana established years earlier, had always featured a long line of customers hungry for the diverse array of spices that the Communist-directed market largely eliminated from island cuisine for years. Suddenly, there was no line because cumin, rosemary, ginger, and even cloves were available for sale at independent farmers’ markets for far cheaper prices. My family, packed with devoted and often despairing cooks, rejoiced! Old Havana, July 2016.
