Debunking the Bodeguita myth?

One of the more common exchanges I had when writing "And a Bottle of Rum" was with folks who told me they'd been to Havana and drank at Hemingway's favorite bar. "Oh, El Floridita," I'd say. "Um, no," they'd reply. "Bodeguita del Medio, where he drank his mojitos."

When I started researching the book, I thought I'd find all sorts of stuff on Hemingway's time at Bodeguita, since his affection for the place is commonly cited in travel guides and articles in the popular press. But it didn't happen. I found lots of anecdotes on Papa's time at El Floridita, but the only real evidence of his time at Bodeguita was the famous scrawl above the bar: "My mojitos at La Bodeguita. My daiquiris at El Floridita." Signed: Ernest Hemingway.

As much as I wanted to play up Bodeguita's Hemingway connection, I ended up only mentioning it in passing because it just didn't seem wholly true. (I probably did give the inscription more credence than I should have in an article I wrote for The Atlantic in October 2005, but still didn't buy into the whole thing.) For starters, Bodeguita opened in 1942; Hemingway had set up shop in the city a decade earlier, and his hangouts seemed pretty well established early on. And he moved outside of the city in 1939, three years before the Bodeguita even opened. But proving a negative is tricky – what's the evidence that he didn't drink here? – and so I ended up skirting the issue in the book.

Now comes some evidence of a negative.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a fine article by Joel Millman about the Hemingway connection with the bar – or lack of it. Among other intriguing details, he cites Delio Valdés, an 85-year-old Miami exile and former Havana nightclub promoter who says that Hemingway was never there.

The most intriguing part of the article (available online only to subscribers) is this:

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.

Not exactly the debate over Shakespeare's authorship, but intriguing in that it discredits the sole evidence of Hemingway's patronage.

At least I believe it's the sole evidence. So to reopen things: I'd be curious if anyone else has come up with references, passing or otherwise, to Hemingway's having even been inside Bodeguita del Medio.