Sloppy Joe’s was the most popular bar in Havana for American tourists during Prohibition. For many, their entire Cuban vacation consisted of a cab ride from the cruise ship to Sloppy Joe’s, where they drank their fill, then headed directly back to the ship and home. Joe’s, which billed itself as “first port of call, out where the wet begins,” was literally the only sight they saw on the island. On busy nights customers massed ten-deep at the bar, with eleven bartenders working the same shift and policemen at the door to prevent stampedes.
Why Joe’s? For one thing, Cubans didn’t drink there; it was strictly a yanqui bar, and Yankees were then a largely xenophobic lot. For another, Joe’s wasn’t a clip joint: prices were low and cocktails were good.
Proprietor José Abeal Y Otero’s gold mine began in 1917 as a sleepy bodega called La Victoria. See Abeal y Otero, Jose “Sloppy Joe.” Legend has it that when a local newspaperman asked José for a loan and he refused, the newsman published an editorial urging the sanitation department to inspect “a place on Zulueta Street which should be called Sloppy Joe’s.” José was furious, but the name stuck—and made him millions during Prohibition, because the name sounded American to Americans. This also helped the bar survive the lean years of World War II, when US servicemen were the only patrons, but sealed its doom after Castro’s revolution kept Americans away, and anti-American sentiment kept locals away. Joe’s shuttered in 1965 but reopened on the same spot in 2013—once again, primarily as a tourist attraction.
Sloppy Joe’s spawned many imitators, the most famous of them being Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, Florida, which officially opened when Prohibition was repealed. Its name was swiped directly from José Abeal’s bar, with which it shared some of its clientele. There, however, the connection ended.
See also Prohibition and Temperance in America.
Berry, Jeff. Beachbum Berry’s Potions of the Caribbean. New York: Cocktail Kingdom, 2014.
Clark, Sydney. All the Best in Cuba. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1946.
Orsi, Peter. “Cheers! Havana Original Sloppy Joe’s Bar Reopens.” Associated Press, April 13, 2013.
By: Jeff Berry