Zoom in

Chef Michel Gonzalez Salas, a graduate of the renowned International Cooking School of Hotel Commodore of the Cuban Capital.

At the Meliá Cohiba Hotel, the flagship lodging facility of the Cuban capital, the Piazza Restaurant serves probably the finest Italian food money can buy in Havana. Opened in 1996, the Piazza has never ever let its patrons down and has always lived up to the wildest and most demanding expectations. The quality of the food goes hand in hand with the professional service offered by a well-trained and skillful team of employees capable of catering to anyone from anywhere. The restaurant has also become a shrine to Cuban baseball, the island’s national pastime that comes to underscore the identity of the Cuban people. Thus, the best Italian food melts into a baseball-oriented atmosphere right in the heart of Havana. Pictures, snapshots, trophies, autographs, uniforms… you name it. All these things belonged to renowned Cuban ballplayers of yesteryear and today, plus memorabilia of other teams from elsewhere, like the Baltimore Orioles and Japan’s Chunichi Dragons. The Piazza Restaurant opens seven days a week from 1:00 pm to midnight.

In the hardworking team of the Piazza Restaurant, Chef Michel Salas Gonzalez, a graduate of the International Cooking School at the Commodore Hotel in the Cuban capital, stands out above the rest of his peers. Michel, 36, considers himself a hands-on man of few words. However, we ferreted out that he’s married and has two daughters. He’s been working at the Piazza Restaurant for half a dozen years now, and even though he excels in international cuisine, he’s fallen for Italian food at the Meliá Cohiba Hotel because –as he himself puts it- “Italian food is always all the rage.” For two years, the Piazza’s employees were endorsed and advised by Italian chef Mario Berutti (associated to Sol Meliá Hotels). His work has been followed up by the same Cuban chefs he trained, even with some contributions of their own to the rich Italian cuisine. With a broad smile and great satisfaction, Michel says his pizzas are “the best in the world.”

“Here we cater to lots of patrons, including international airline crews that stay at the hotel, and these people, you know, they live almost literally out of a suitcase. They travel to China, Mexico, Down Under. But when they come here, they all say our pizzas are pretty good. That really makes us very proud,” Michel goes on to say. Finally, he answers our last question with a roguish tone: “In my house, my wife cooks and doesn’t let me into the kitchen because she’s kind of fussy as far as order and cleanness are concerned. She says I always turns the kitchen into a real mess.” The following is Michel’s recipe for the readers of Excellences, the specialty of the house he works for.

Piazza Pizza Ingredients: 150 g of pizza dough 40 g of tuna fish 10 g of palm tree kernel 60 g of pepper 120 g of crushed tomatoes 40 g of Prosciutto di Parma 5 midsize whole shrimps 60 g of lobster meat 30 g of smoked salmon 150 g of cheese ground chard

Put the pizza dough on a smooth and clean surface (a marble table is ideal) and knead it with your hands until it thins down to 3 mm thick. Smear the dough with the crushed tomatoes until you cover the entire surface. Add the rest of the ingredients in the following order: cheese, shrimps, lobster, smoked salmon, pepper, palm tree kernel, tuna fish and sprinkle the ground chard on top. Put it in a preheated oven at 550 degrees Celsius for five minutes. Remove it from the oven and add the Prosciutto di Parma before serving, in the shape of a rose. Put a good bottle of white or red wine on the table and bon appetit!