The Asheville, North Carolina, restaurant reflects a life remade in exile.
Photo Above: Empanadas at Hemingway’s Cuba are house-made and stuffed with either beef or chicken. Photo Courtesy of Hemingway’s Cuba
“My father used to call it a ‘silver spoon life,’ until that life was taken away when he was 17 years old,” says Alex Fraga, owner of Hemingway’s Cuba in Asheville, North Carolina.
Alex’s father Antonio, known as Tony, often recounted his final days in his native country of Cuba when his family of engineers and doctors lost all their wealth at the hands of dictator Fidel Castro.
“I had three choices: go to jail, go to the firing squad or leave,” Tony recalled. In January of 1960, Tony and his family fled Cuba.
At first, in America, the Fragas had to share housing with four other families. Tony took a job as a mail clerk with IBM in New York and eventually worked his way into a managerial position in Detroit, where Alex was born. Later, with his wife and four children, Tony went out on his own, moving to Miami in 1979 to establish a real estate company and later expanding into hospitality. That firm, FIRC Group, is now headquartered in Asheville.
Tony died on New Year’s Day in 2023. Alex now leads the business, and one of its properties is Asheville’s Cambria Hotel.
Located on the fourth floor of the hotel is Tony Fraga’s dream restaurant, Hemingway’s Cuba, which he and his son opened on December 15, 2017. It was a project that might not have happened, were it not for a change of heart the previous year.
After leaving Cuba, Tony expressed no desire to return, as long as any member of the Castro family retained political power. But Alex and his siblings thought a trip back home might bring closure for their father.
“We told him that most of the people in Cuba, besides the government, they’re not the reason you had to leave. They’re just in survival mode,” remembers Alex. “It took us two years to convince him to go back.
“When he finally went there, in 2016, he was so excited about seeing his old house where he grew up. All these memories came back to him, and he was our tour guide. He knew exactly where to go. And one day he takes me to lunch at El Floridita.”
It was Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar and seafood restaurant in Havana. His days at El Floridita are memorialized in the form of a bronze statue of him leaning on the bar.
Once Alex and his father returned to Asheville, they were still struggling to come up with a name for their new Cuban restaurant in the city.
“My father called me at 3:00 one morning and starts yelling, in his Cuban accent, ‘Hemingway’s Cuba!’”
Despite being half asleep, Alex thought it was a “brilliant idea,” and they settled the issue immediately. Alex’s company pays for the rights to use the Hemingway name.
“Every color in Hemingway’s Cuba we patterned after El Floridita in Havana,” Alex tells us. “The red bar, the blue banquettes, the furniture.”
Outside El Floridita is a sign, in Spanish, promoting it as the “cradle of the daiquiri.” When they were there, Alex and Tony asked for the daiquiri recipe Ernest Hemingway preferred, and the owners gave it willingly. It’s now the most popular cocktail at Hemingway’s Cuba. Along with the mandatory rum and lime juice, Hemingway added grapefruit juice and Luxardo, a maraschino cherry liqueur made in Italy since 1821.
Many customers take their daiquiris out to the terrace at Hemingway’s Cuba, for an extraordinary view of the sun setting over the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“It’s 4,000 square feet of outdoor space, strategically planned by my father,” says Alex. “About a third of it is covered with a retractable roof, and there are three firepits for winter. It’s an incredible environment for weddings and selfies. The biggest compliment I can receive is hearing someone say it’s like being in Miami but with mountains behind us.”
As for the food, Alex says it’s “as Cuban as you can make it.” That comes from a man whose father specialized in the cooking of black beans.
Around 5:00 every afternoon Alex walks from his nearby office to the kitchen of Hemingway’s Cuba. He greets the staff, grabs a couple of spoons and does some tasting.
He is often accompanied by his wife, Claudia Ramirez, a native of Colombia whom he describes as “an excellent Cuban cook.”
Ropa vieja, or “old clothes,” is the top-selling plated dish at Hemingway’s Cuba.
“It’s very traditional, our version of beef stew,” Alex says. It’s a cooking style, Alex adds, that’s devoid of fusion. “There’s no fused this or that.”
Vaca frita, or fried beef, is made with a grandmother’s care, to keep the edges crispy and the inside juicy. Empanadas, stuffed with chicken or beef, are prepared in-house. Rice and beans, ripe plantains known as maduros and guava pastries are among the many examples of Cuban home cooking on the menu every day.
Says Alex Fraga, “I want you to be floored by the music, smell the food and have a good time. That’s what happened when my family got together, every time, and it still does today.”
Hemingway’s Cuba
15 Page Avenue
On the fourth floor of the Cambria Hotel
Asheville, North Carolina
Fred and Jill Sauceman study and celebrate the foodways of Appalachia and the South from their home base in Johnson City, Tennessee.
The story above first appeared in our September / October 2025 issue.
