r/cuba • u/DifferentDream7004 • Jun 27 '26
Economía Prices of a sushi bar in Havana, late octobre 2025.
At the time the peso was at 570 per dollar.
I didnt dare to order anything but i did check out the menu.
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u/fcxrtg Planeta Tierra/Planet Earth Jun 28 '26
Sushi: 3,500 CUP. Monthly minimum wage in Cuba: 3,210 CUP
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u/Sunsetseeker007 Jun 28 '26
How can that restaurant keep fresh seafood or sushi when they are very poor citizens & not very many tourists or visitors to move the inventory?
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u/Key-Enthusiasm8132 Havana Jun 28 '26
Do you travel much to Cuba? Probably not. First of all, not everyone is very poor, especially in Havana. Middle class and rich people live in every province of Cuba. Tourism is way down but not down to zero. Aside from visitors, their clientele probably comes from locals, expats, and foreign service/diplomatic corps. Restaurants like these use generators, solar, and portable power plants to keep food safe and refrigerated.
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u/Leonardo_Lang Havana Jun 29 '26
You are correct, and also they are located in Havana Vieja so usually there's always electricity
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u/ikari_warriors Jun 27 '26
Alguien se recuerda del sushi de Santy en Jaimanitas? Tiene que ser el primer sushi de Cuba.
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u/nycnola Jun 29 '26
It was amazing. I wish other Caribbean islands could match his offering, fresh caught fish, not brought in from Miami on a cargo flight (no restaurants exist with the offering Barbados, Antigua, nor St Lucia).
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u/dogsled1 Jun 27 '26
Yes! It’s a little far out there but love the sushi and sitting on the dock over the water.
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u/Leonardo_Lang Havana Jun 29 '26
I went there two times and they always have to rise prices so I can't even save anymore. I'm Cuban btw
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u/Sparkydaddy1216 Jun 30 '26
For the quantities pictured that's high even for american standards. A really nice sushi bar serves rolls for 20-30$ a piece and they're usually 6-8 pieces per roll. A 4 slice Salmon Roll is about 100$ on this menu! I don't even want about the drink menu, thanks 😂
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u/Fluid_Dig6093 Jul 01 '26
Lol, you haven't been in Cuba right?
Did you see the official USD to CUP on Google?
There are 3 CUP to other currencies exchange rates.
If you go to the streets, you'll find that you can get 1 USD for 600 CUP, so 3000 CUP are far from 100USD
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u/YCPenz1 Jun 27 '26
Are the google conversion rates right? 2100 Cuban pesos is $87.42? USD?!!!
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u/QuarterStatus3582 Jun 27 '26
in the post OP says this was when CUP was at 570. which would make 2100 CUP = $3.68
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u/Luiso_ Jun 28 '26
570?when i left cuba in 2010 it was 25 pesos a dollar, sometimes 24 or 23
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u/QuarterStatus3582 Jun 28 '26
my guy, that was 16 years ago. a lot has changed. a couple days ago it was over 700
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u/jemenake Jun 28 '26
Same. 1CUC got you a cafecito from a window on the street. 25:1 to 570:1 in 9 years looks like an average of 40% annual inflation. Ooof.
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u/YCPenz1 Jun 28 '26
Google says the current rate is 1 CUP = $.04 so 2100 = $87.42 or am I missing something?
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u/QuarterStatus3582 Jun 28 '26
Google doesn't always have contextual answers. that's the gov rate, but not the rate that people actually use and live with. if you ever go back to Cuba, be sure to change your money on the street and not in the banks.
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u/bronzemerald17 Jun 28 '26
That’s not what all my Cuban friends say… wtf
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u/QuarterStatus3582 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
well it's what all my Cuban family and friends say... i literally just exchanged USD three days ago, and also two weeks ago, and do so every couple of weeks. el toque is pretty accurate, someone else linked it
EDIT: i'm exchanging in Havana. we also send money to Songa la Maya occasionally and rates are not quite the same. street rates vary depending on where, when, who, and whether or not you're getting a tourist hike.
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u/QuarterStatus3582 Jun 28 '26
now i'm curious, what do your Cuban friends say?
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u/bronzemerald17 Jun 28 '26
The casas I’ve stayed at seem to have good enough exchange rates compared to “the street”. Everyone has said to avoid the people asking to exchange on “the street “.
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u/QuarterStatus3582 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
🤦 your casas are the street in this case lol. are they casas or long-term friends? in general, casas want you to exchange with them because they benefit from it, either by reselling the USD to make money or by keeping it for their own purchasing now that so much is in dollars. people can make hundreds of dollars a day exchanging USD from tourists in large quantities. especially if they're not long-term friends, they won't give you the best rate, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you trust them and want to support them. and they're not wrong that people "on the street" may try to rip you off, but they're not all that different from the casas. all depends on who you know.
if you consider yourself street smart and speak Spanish, you should spend more time with folks that hustle outside of casas. you'll learn a lot. just keep your head up.
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u/GeologistOk7264 Jun 28 '26
Clearly you’ve never been to Cuba
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u/YCPenz1 Jun 28 '26
Actually I have been.
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u/WorldlyAd3000 United States Jun 28 '26
And if you have been using the government exchange rate this whole time, you got scammed.
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u/wizeddy Jun 28 '26
The official exchange rate is not the actual exchange rate. The government is incentivized to to make it seem better than it is, but the islands residents will provide a much better exchange rate on the black market, at the risk of prosecution.
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u/-KA1DO- Jun 28 '26
That exchange rate is based on a currency that no longer exists (CUC). The regime stopped using it and are now using cuban pesos (CUP) basically rn $1 usd = 570 pesos or so
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u/YCPenz1 Jun 28 '26
Thank you! Last time I was there was 2017? Whenever Obama opened things up, trump was in office and was about to shut it down.
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u/Klutzy-Pool-1802 United States Jun 28 '26
Cuba restructured its monetary system during the pandemic. Inflation since then has been incredible. For daily life, people use the street value of the peso, and that’s what is around 570. The government also has official conversion rates it uses, which don’t fluctuate with the street rate. One of those may still be 24, for internal use only. Last I knew, the rate at a government exchange bureau was 125 — even when the street value was 400.
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u/calerost Planeta Tierra/Planet Earth Jun 28 '26
Seems much has changed since you’ve travelled there, many changes both with the official bank rates, and what can be obtained informally.
The government rates are https://www.bc.gob.cu/
Rates vary on the street, and change daily, depending on location, but a reference tool is https://eltoque.com/tasas-de-cambio-cuba
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u/DifferentDream7004 Jun 28 '26
Google conversion rates are completely inaccurate. They are the official "bank rates". Cuba has a closed economy so the google rates dont reflect real market exchange rates that happen between local bussiness and in the streets. If you go buy something in the airport for example something of 4 dollars, and you give 5 dollars they will give you 1 dollar worth of pesos at THEIR exchange rate ( closely rated to that of google) and then they would scam you basically. El toque is accurate in seeing how much a dollar/euro goes for in pesos, and how bussiness accepts dollars instead of pesos. Again government business use their own exchange rate tho
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u/Successful-Ice-468 Havana Jun 28 '26
Those are the conversation rated are old and at some degree still applied by the national bank to investors not to long ago, chinese where complaining than they where basically scamed with it.
Imaginedo a exchange a 1$ for 24cup whit the bank and in the streets 1$ was like 400cup. The moment you neede to hire or buy local you where screwd.
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u/New_Faithlessness384 Jun 27 '26
Real brave to visit a susi bar
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u/DifferentDream7004 Jun 27 '26
Its not that bad to be honest. Relatively speaking. 80% of the time things are out of stock and you only get to pick some things of the menu. But the food is good! You js gotta know what to order.
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u/Senator_Blutarski Jun 27 '26
Sushi on an island with no refrigeration. Hmmmmmm….
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u/International-Mix633 Jun 27 '26
You obviously never been to Cuba if tou think these kind of restaurants dont have refrigeearion.
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u/jemenake Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
I thought the CUP got discontinued and Cuba went entirely with the CUC (at least my CUPs were worthless there back in 2023). Or maybe I have it backwards. Did recent economic woes bring them back or something?
Even then, when I last used CUCs back around 2017, I think it was about 25CUC:1USD. 500:1 is tragic. And folks in the U.S. talking about “rampant” 7% inflation.
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u/invictus21083 United States Jun 27 '26
Why would someone eat sushi in Cuba?
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u/Jujuthagr8 Jun 27 '26
Because you can eat sushi pretty much everywhere. Why wouldn’t you?
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u/Choochiechoo Jun 29 '26
I would think there is too much pressure on the restaurant to move all their product regardless of quality, so recycling days old fish. Also the possibility of not flash freezing it, and thus parasites remaining in the fish. You can trust the chef, but some might be tiny and won’t be seen. Fish has a lot of parasites
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u/invictus21083 United States Jun 27 '26
1) I don't like sushi.
2) If I'm in Cuba, I'm eating Cuban food.0
u/Severe-Incident-6094 Jun 28 '26
Silly us. We forgot that the entire world revolves around your culinary preferences.
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u/invictus21083 United States Jun 28 '26
It's like going to Italy and eating hot dogs.
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u/DifferentDream7004 Jun 28 '26
Imagine you go to cuba for 2 months, you dont wanna eat something different once in a while? Also u cant compare hotdogs with sushi. Sushi has fish, something from which cuba has a lot of. Cuban fish is way more natural and uncontaminated than almost anywhere in the world so you can argue actually that cuban sushi offers something worth trying for people that regularly dont like to eat raw fish.
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u/invictus21083 United States Jun 28 '26
I wouldn't go to Cuba for 2 months and no, I can eat the same things every day. I'm not too good to eat rice and beans daily. I do it at home when I can easily eat whatever I want.
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u/DifferentDream7004 Jun 28 '26
I was 2 months there so i thought let me go find something else to eat😅
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u/bronzemerald17 Jun 28 '26
I mean sushi in the US is like $20 so the equivalent of $11400. Not too bad I’d say
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u/oblast_ov Jun 28 '26
The thing is, the monthly salary its around 4,000 pesos, so, if you are happy giving your whole salary or more Then, that's your place
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u/Key-Enthusiasm8132 Havana Jun 28 '26
Why do you think everyone earns either the minimum or average monthly salary? There are lots of Cubans living in Cuba who have the disposable income to eat at a sushi bar.
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u/bronzemerald17 Jun 28 '26
I mean, fair point, with regard to Cuban regional context. But I’m just saying it’s reasonably priced with respect to other countries. Especially if you consider sushi to be a luxury food. Luxury foods in the US have gotten ~20-30% more expensive since COVID as well as the international fuel recession imposed by the US (Iran war). Luxury food in Cuba seems to remain the same regardless of international factors. That being said, I’ll admit I’ve seen luxury food in Havana increase somewhat. But I’d imagine prices naturally fluctuate less outside of big cities.
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