José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), a very polemic Cuban author, who wrote the novel Paradiso chose El Patio restaurant in La Habana Vieja as cuisine headquarter, a site of many aromas and a daydreaming environment.

For the writer, who compared once the lamb to the reading and placing them in their corresponding place, without discrediting one before another, it was a pleasant place worth to be visited in order to try some of its excellent dishes served in a unique decoration environment.
A site declared World Heritage by UNESCO in 1982 has been opened for more than 40 years February 28, 1965) in the Plaza de la Catedral at the ancient area of the capital, ideal to know about its history.

Lezama Lima chose the best, as hundreds of tourists do day after day, who walk alone or in group the historic-cultural areas in this neighborhood, through stone treets, and fachades that still have the traces of the colonial architecture.

The restaurant is located in a house of the 18th century, the Casa del Marqués de Aguas Claras, that was used for different purposes until it was a very luxury dining house. It is worth passing by for those who have a demanding taste. The facitlity features 350 seats, spread in four restaurants, a coffe shop in the portal of the house and two snack-bar, as well as a show room with 13 seats, that makes it a renewing complex.

The Patio gives service to approximately 25 thousand customers yearly, as well as it is integrated to cultural galas in the Plaza de la Catedral due to the parties for the New Year and they supply those events with their dishes, where thousands of people attend yearly.

The staff tells that their marketing strategy is client oriented, the quality of the offer, historic-cultural potential of the facility and a greater publicity of their dishes.

Of course, there is a range of the Cuban intellectuality that is bound to this trategy since, apart from Lezama Lima, there are frequent comers such as the painters Victor Manuel, Posada, the Ecuadorian Oswaldo Guayasamín, the writer Alejo Carpentier, the Nicaraguan politician Daniel Ortega, the Cuban musician Frank Fernández and Juan Formell, as well as the Ministries of culture from different countries.

Some of them dead, giving supreme soul and spirituality, other alive, renewing each day the linage of the restaurant, they enforce a unique environment that many people claim not just to eat by to live an incomparable moment.

Spanish, Italians and French prefer them due to their variety in a carte of 32 dishes of international food and local (typical) above all, supported by national renown products such as the rum, the cigar and the coffee.

An excellent wine carte ends the list, where the meats could be very well accompanied, but also seafood is demanded in order to taste them with white wine and then to complete the dinner. The Patio is a truly Cuban feast.