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CALIENTE CUISINE

As U.S. consumers develop a taste for Latin food, Cuba Libre serves it in style

By Maura K. Ammenheuser

Partygoers know a Cuba Libre as a rum and Coke with a wedge of lime. Bartending lore has it that this cocktail was invented around the time of the Spanish-American War. U.S. soldiers fighting to oust the Spanish from the Caribbean mixed rum with Coca-Cola and toasted to “Cuba libre (a free Cuba)!” Today Cuba Libre is not just a sweet drink with a kick but a restaurant that mixes nostalgia and Latin zest. Actually, it is two restaurants — one in Philadelphia’s Old City, the other at the Tropicana Casino & Resort, in Atlantic City, N.J. “You walk in the door and you’re transported to another time,” said Jason Spillerman, principal of Philadelphia-based Vibrant Development, which helped the Tropicana develop The Quarter, its restaurant-retail zone. “We wanted places, when you walk in, you go, ‘Oh, wow. ’”

Cuba Libre’s founders, Barry Gutin and Larry Cohen, want to expand. Gutin says they hope to open two more restaurants sometime within the next two years, and perhaps two per year for the next three years thereafter. The partners are eyeing lifestyle centers as well as casinos and major metropolitan downtown sites. Without identifying specific centers, Gutin says the chain is likely to grow along the East Coast and in Chicago and Las Vegas. The company knows just what it wants in retail venues too. “We are looking for large ones,” he said. “They are going to be popular restaurant destinations and have a good nightlife.”

Retail venues, and lifestyle centers in particular, should recognize the growing magnetic power of restaurants, says Mike Rubin, president of MRA International, a Philadelphia consulting firm that also worked on the Quarter. “The restaurants are becoming, especially when they’re clustered, anchors,” said Rubin. “They draw from a slightly broader area than retailers do.”

Anchor-weight restaurants typically have only one unit in a region and can pull in anywhere between $5 million and $12 million in annual revenue, Rubin says. Yearly revenue for a casual, sit-down eatery, he says, averages about $1.6 million.

Cuba Libre’s Philadelphia restaurant, which opened in 2000, posts nearly $6 million in yearly revenue in its 8,000-square-foot space, says Gutin. The unit at the Tropicana, which opened in 2004 with 13,000 square feet, brings in almost $9 million a year, he says. The average dinner tab comes to about $50, including drinks. “You can’t help but go into Cuba Libre,” said Spillerman. “It serves as an anchor at the Trop.”

The Cuba Libre restaurants are colorful architectural tributes to Havana as it was during the first half of the 20th century, featuring two-level spaces with courtyards, balconies, tile roofs and tropical plants. “The second it opened, it was a hit,” said Meryl Levitz, CEO of Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., a private, nonprofit organization that promotes the city. Cuba Libre presents “a fun, almost Disneyfied version of Havana — what people fantasize Havana in the ’50s to have been.”

Cuba Libre offers breakfast, lunch and dinner, live entertainment at night and a rum bar serving about 90 types of rum. “They do a crazy happy hour,” Levitz said.

The 7 p.m. seating draws people into their 70s; as the night progresses, younger patrons arrive. On weekend nights there is a floor show with Latin ballroom dancing. About 8.5 percent of Philadelphia’s 1.5 million residents are Hispanic or Latino, according to Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing, though few are Cuban, Gutin says.

Asked why he chose a Cuban concept rather than another specialty, Gutin, 51, replied, “When I was young I developed an interest in Cuba during the Kennedy era.” Further, he could see the growing Hispanic influence on pop culture in terms of music, fashion and food. “It’s very hot in cuisine,” he said. “Also, we recognized a certain nobility to the culture,” he said, as well as a “forbiddenness” that makes it intriguing. The restaurant’s Web site says executive chef Guillermo Pernot “introduced nuevo Latino cuisine to Philadelphia” — referring to food flavored with Spanish, African and Asian influences, heavily seasoned but “only occasionally spicy.” The dinner menu includes Pollo al Ajillo — “chicken breast stuffed with chorizo and tetilla cheese in Spanish sherry garlic sauce” — and 10 Cane Tuna, which is tuna marinated in guava, soy sauce and rum, skewered on sugar cane “and served on coconut-calabaza rice tossed with king-crab leg.” Entrees run from about $18 to $27.

Cuba Libre was Philadelphia’s first Cuban eatery, Levitz says, and it succeeds because “it’s very accessible in terms of price and Cuban food that’s very approachable for people who are not familiar with Cuban food.” Parent company Libre Management enjoys the benefit of a staff of food industry veterans. The Philadelphia-based company also operates Brulee: The Dessert Experience, which is located in the Quarter too; Shampoo, a Philadelphia dance club; and 32 Degree Luxe Lounge, nightclubs in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Libre Management also runs Max and Me, a catering operation with exclusive contracts with the Curtis Center, the National Constitution Center and the Please Touch Museum, all in Philadelphia. That résumé will serve Gutin and Cohen well, because developers considering a relatively new and untested concept will rely heavily on the credibility of management and on the financials.

Gutin says they seek no specific kind of co-tenant. He wants Cuba Libre to fall in the middle of the price range offered by a center’s dining options. Anyone in the same price range with an ethnic menu is a potential competitor, he says.

Sources cite Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Chang’s China Bistro as catering to similar demographics and seeking similar lifestyle center locations. Despite Americans’ relative unfamiliarity with Cuban cuisine, this should not be a difficult sell to developers, sources say. Levitz envisions Cuba Libre thriving in big, luxury centers, such as King of Prussia (Pa.) Mall, and in such college towns as Austin, Texas. “Ethnics are pretty hot right now, particularly Latin,” said Marc Frankel, a managing director of New York City-based Newmark Knight Frank’s restaurant services group. Rubin calls Cuba Libre’s cuisine “Latin fusion,” that is, not limited strictly to Cuban cuisine, though emphasizing it. “Pan-Asian took off as a restaurant genre 10 years ago,” Rubin said. Indeed, P.F. Chang’s is evidence. Today any mid-size American city has not just Chinese take-out joints, but also Korean, Thai and Vietnamese eateries as well. Now Americans are seeing the beginning of a similar trend in Latin food, says Rubin. Recent lifestyle center projects he has worked on have demanded four restaurant themes: Mediterranean/Italian, Pan-Asian, steakhouse and Latin.

Though Gutin and Cohen are clearly in no rush to pepper the U.S. with Cuba Libres, they hope developers will agree that their concept is muy caliente. Those who have visited the first two restaurants seem to think so, Levitz says. “You feel like you’re 90 miles south of the coast of Florida.”