Baracoa cooking is the most distinctive in Cuba. Coconut milk is used in almost everything — savoury fish and rice, sweet desserts, the thick stew called bacán. The local cocoa shows up in sauces as well as in chocolate. Cucurucho, a sweet-and-savoury palm-leaf-wrapped sweet of coconut, fruit, and honey, is sold by the roadside on the way out of town.
Most travellers eat in private paladares — restaurants in casas particulares — which range from kitchens at the back of someone's living room to more formal places with menus. Ask your host; the scene shifts faster than any guidebook can track.