HISTORY
HISTORY OF
EL FLORIDITA
Las Floriditas is seen widely as a tribute to El Floridita in Havana, Cuba. First opened in 1817 under the name Piña de Plata, and later renamed to El Floridita in 1914, the world-famous bar is known for being a favorite haunt of author Ernest Hemingway, where he would often spend his afternoons at the end of the bar unwinding after a long day of writing. A life-size golden statue of the legendary author now leans on the end of the bar he so often frequented. Floridita is known as “la cuna del daiquiri” – the cradle, or birthplace, of the daiquiri; Hemingway’s favorite cocktail. One now sits in front of his life-size statue at the end of the bar every day.
PAPA DOBLE –
THE HEMINGWAY DAIQUIRI
Hilary Hemingway, niece of Ernest, details how the author grew to love El Floridita. “In the early 1930s, [he] went into the Floridita to use the restroom one day. People in the bar were bragging about the daiquiris that were being served there. So he ordered one and took a sip. Ernest asked for another one, this time with ‘less sugar and more rum.’ And that’s how the Papa Doble, or the Hemingway Daiquiri, was born.”
The Papa was for Hemingway, known for his graying beard and fatherly self-assurance. The doble — well, that meant two. Two times more liquor to pack the most punch. Phillip Greene, author of the book To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion, says Hemingway proudly boasted to have downed 17 of his favorite bartender Constante’s daiquiris over the course of one afternoon in 1942. Seventeen dobles, that is. As Greene appropriately remarks in his book, “that’s a hell of a lot of daiquiri.”