A New York City restaurant, inspired by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, is opening its second location in Miami in spring 2022.
Café Habana opened its first location in a former Dominican New York City diner in 1998, according to its website. The site describes its founder, Sean Meenan, as an “eco conscious philanthroper, and visionary entrepreneur.”
The cafe, with a combination of Cuban and Mexican cuisine, is reportedly set to open at 229 S Miami Ave, according to Miami Herald. The restaurant reportedly has a backstory in communist revolutionary lore, describing its inspiration on its website.
“Inspired by a storied Mexico City hangout, where legend has it Che Guevara and Fidel Castro plotted the Cuban Revolution, the flagship Café Habana location was created out of an old-school New York diner in 1997. Eighteen years later, Café Habana remains an institution…” (RELATED: 1 In 3 Millennials See Communism As Favorable, Survey Finds)
The description was reportedly removed from Google and its website after it received criticism from people in Miami this week. A Miami podcaster, Josue, took to Instagram expressing his disapproval of the restaurant.
New York’s Cafe Habana “Cuban-Mexican” restaurant “Inspired by a storied Mexico City hangout, where legend has it Che Guevara and Fidel Castro plotted the Cuban Revolution,” is opening a Miami location, Miami says: GTFOH #BecauseMiami: https://t.co/xgoDLZXOXp pic.twitter.com/BeecZvAh1i
— Because Miami (@BecauseMiami) February 8, 2022
“The last thing I wanted to do was to turn this page political. But when we said don’t bring no New York shit to Miami, we meant don’t bring no New York shit to Miami,” Josue said. He added that it didn’t matter if the restaurant removed its communist-inspired story from its site because “mixing Cuban and Mexican food is already an insult on its own, you don’t do that.”
Communist revolutionary-inspired restaurants are not exclusive to New York City and Miami. Prager U’s Will Witt posted a video Monday of a restaurant in Cluj-Napoca, Romania called “Che Guevara.”
“Romania of all places that dealt with Communism,” Witt said, “that got out of Communism in 1990, where millions of people died … and now they have a Che Guevara cafe. And this was modernized by the European Union.”