London Hotel to Open Version of Hemingway’s Favorite Cuban Bar

Cuba is reaching out to London with its music, its cocktails and its cigars with the opening of a modern version of El Floridita, one of American writer Ernest Hemingway’s favorite hangouts in Havana.

The new facility, located in one of finest areas of the British capital, includes a restaurant, a bar and a Cigar House. Construction works are scheduled to get underway next autumn.

“We’re going to mix Cuban music, cocktails and cigars of contemporary designs, plus top-notch food delicacies,” says Des Gunewardena of Conran Group, a company that runs some of London’s fanciest restaurants.

Opened in 1817, El Floridita is considered the cradle of daiquiri. U.S. novelist Ernest Hemingway used to hang out here during the decades he lived in Havana until his death in 1961. Other rich and famous people who guzzled cocktails here were mobster Al Capone, actor Gary Cooper and Hollywood bad boy Errol Flynn.

The details of this initiative to be executed by a joint ventured that has partnered Boisdale Group and Terence Conran Designers, were disclosed during a party at Havana’s National Hotel within the framework of the recently concluded Sixth International Cigar Festival.

Cuba has tried to export some of its own tourist attractions to other countries in the past, especially franchises of the Cigar House and La Bodeguita del Medio, another restaurant that Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway called his home.