WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Hemingway's Ties
To a Havana Bar
Still Move the Mojitos

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- A life-size likeness of Ernest Hemingway greets diners entering La Bodeguita del Medio bistro near Stanford University here. Patrons at La Bodeguita del Medio in Prague order The Old Man and the Seafood plate. And in London's new version of the same restaurant, which opened last month, the owner says Hemingway novels will be available for perusal in the men's room.

It's all part of a Hemingway-in-Havana craze popping up in bars with Cuban themes from Puerto Vallarta, in Mexico, to Paris. Most of these La Bodeguita del Medio bistros -- there are nearly 50 world-wide -- boasts a replica of a handwritten note Mr. Hemingway supposedly penned decades ago, paying homage to two Havana watering holes where, legend has it, he battled writer's block with alcohol.

"My mojito in La Bodeguita del Medio, my daiquiri in El Floridita," reads Mr. Hemingway's endorsement, written in longhand across a piece of butcher paper. The note, in facsimile, usually hangs above each restaurant's bar.

There's no doubt that Mr. Hemingway frequented El Floridita, but a nagging question hangs over all these other bistros: Was "Papa," as Mr. Hemingway was known, actually a regular at Havana's La Bodeguita del Medio?

No, says Delio Valdés, an elderly Miamian claiming to be the last of a group of Cuban nightclub promoters of the original La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana. A journalist and press agent, Mr. Valdés, 85 years old, waxes nostalgic over the landmark's lively 1950s heyday, when patrons rubbed elbows with the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Nat "King" Cole.

But not Ernest Hemingway. "I was at La Bodeguita almost daily, and I saw him once," insists Mr. Valdés. "And that was only because a tour guide brought him in, with some rich Americans."

Adding another dig, Mr. Valdés says it wasn't even Hemingway who wrote the mojito-daiquiri line. The author, he says, was a noted Havana bon vivant, Fernando Campoamor, who, according to Mr. Valdés, wrote the line while visiting Mr. Hemingway's home, where he persuaded the author, who was drunk, to sign it.

Cuba was one of several exotic pit stops the writer enjoyed during the last two decades before his death in 1961. He bought a seaside house outside Havana in 1939, and began work on his novel of the Spanish Civil War, "For Whom the Bell Tolls." During World War II, Hemingway simultaneously looked for German submarines off the coast of Cuba and went deep-sea fishing, excursions that provided material for "The Old Man and the Sea," which helped win him the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He left Cuba during the 1959 revolution, but returned for visits. He met the country's new revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, in 1960.

Ever since, the Castro government has drawn tourists by stoking the writer's ties to Cuba, and his presumed fondness for La Bodeguita del Medio. Besides the obvious merchandising of Hemingway T-shirts and souvenirs, there is also "The Hemingway Trail," where tourists visit the author's former Havana marina and seaside home and are then guided to La Bodeguita del Medio, today a government-run tourist destination.

In 2001, Cuba's state-owned tourism conglomerate, El Gran-Caribe SA, began licensing La Bodeguita del Medio franchises abroad, although not in the U.S., where it can't do business because of the U.S. trade embargo imposed in 1962. Charging licensing fees of up to $100,000, plus 5% of gross revenues, the Castro regime today takes in at least $500,000 a year through the franchises, according to estimates from franchisees and others in the restaurant industry. Turempleo SA, a state employment agency, sends licensees Cuban waiters, bartenders, cooks and musicians, who jump at the chance to work overseas and earn good tips.

The concept clicked, and La Bodeguita outlets spread across Latin America and European cities including Paris and Berlin. Even in former communist capitals like Prague -- where some locals call the restaurants "McCastro's" -- the Hemingway link attracts business. Prague's La Bodeguita boasts a 1959 Chevy on site that patrons can summon for a ride to the nightclub or a ride home after the meal.

Not everyone is happy to see the Castro regime cashing in on the Hemingway name. "It's all communist propaganda," says Mery Martínez, a 57-year-old widow who claims her late husband was related to the restaurant's original owner, Angel Martínez. Ms. Martínez, who until recently operated her own La Bodeguita del Medio in Miami's Little Havana, says she too believes it was the late Mr. Campoamor who scribbled Hemingway's words about mojitos and daiquiris.

The Cuban government refused interview requests.

It's not just Cuba's government that has a commercial venture tied to the Hemingway legend. In the U.S., La Bodeguita del Medio restaurants are being opened by Michael Ekwall, a 40-year-old Californian. In addition to his place here in Palo Alto, he's opening another next year in Oakland.

A self-described late bloomer, Mr. Ekwall visited Cuba regularly during the 11 years it took him to finish his undergraduate degree in political science at the University of California at Los Angeles. He first noticed the restaurant during a 1991 trip to Havana and opened a replica in Palo Alto in 1997, obtaining a U.S. trademark on the name. Mr. Ekwall duplicated everything about the Havana restaurant.

Having bought out his original partners in 2003, Mr. Ekwall began to franchise the restaurant beyond California, selling licensing rights in Florida to a Miami entrepreneur, Joseph Maya.

Mr. Maya encountered a problem, however: There was already a La Bodeguita del Medio in Little Havana, opened in 2003 by Ms. Martínez. Since Mr. Ekwall had registered the trademark before the Miami restaurant opened, Mr. Maya filed a suit against Ms. Martínez, which was settled out of court. She renamed her place La Bodeguita del Martínez and a year later sold the business.

Upset about the dispute with the California upstart, Ms. Martínez publicly questioned the restaurant's connection with Mr. Hemingway. Some newspaper columnists in Miami soon echoed her views.

"Notice how all of Fidel's Bodeguitas del Medio are festooned with the flag of Ernest Hemingway, which had nothing to do with the original Bodeguita of the Martínez family," read a full-page editorial in an anti-Castro Little Havana tabloid, La Política Cómica.

Mr. Maya, meanwhile, is marshaling his own witnesses to support his new restaurant's Hemingway link. Showing a reporter around a dusty construction site in tony Coral Gables, he was accompanied by an elderly exile, 74-year-old Hector Martínez. Mr. Martínez claims to be a nephew of the original Bodeguita's founder. Hector Martínez swears Ernest Hemingway was a regular there.

"I saw him there whenever I went to my uncle's place," the old man says. "Maybe twice a week."

Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com