Cuban television has withdrawn the program from prime time Chefarándula, run by Spanish chef Miguel Ángel Jiménez.
The room, which previously aired Fridays at 8:45 p.m. will be broadcast immediately on Mondays at 3:30 p.m.
Jiménez himself broke the news on his Facebook wall, where he indicated that it can also be enjoyed on digital platforms “to continue learning and tasting the exquisite Cuban flavors”.
Facebook screenshot / Chefarandula
The change comes two weeks after a program in which the chef taught children from the La Colmenita theater company to learn how to make chocolate-coated donuts, a recipe whose ingredients (flour, sugar, yeast, eggs, and milk and butter) are scarce in the country.
This broadcast led to a multitude of Criticism from Cuban parents who refused to admit minors to a room where cooking is taught when the vast majority of families do not have access to these foods.
“The majority of Cuban children do not have access to any of this. Let’s see what I tell my children. You know how a Cuban mother feels, of course you don’t. It’s a lack of empathy, sensitivity and love for others,” says one mother, outraged by the tactlessness of the chef and the show’s producers.
“I don’t know how they can do this program when most kids can’t eat candy,” said an elementary school teaching assistant.
Miguel Ángel Jiménez, known as Chef Farándula, is a Spaniard who has been living in Cuba for more than 10 years, where he not only stars in the TV show Sabe a Chef, but also worked in hotels of the chains Meliá, Iberostar, Cubanacán and Greater Caribbean.
As filmmaker Lester Hamlet revealed upon his arrival in the United States last September, it is personal cook of the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel’s wife, Lis Cuestaand the indirect person responsible for his ban from Cuban television.
“After presenting a program I created [Sabe a Chef], which people liked and which changed the style of the “cooking show” on the island, they dropped me from the program with the stroke of a pen because I had two purely production differences with the chef and the host of the room, because he is the personal chef by Lis Cuesta. She kicked me out of the program with the stroke of a pen and said I would never look up in Cuba again,” Hamlet said at the time.