Walking down a dark Havana street alone, I felt very lost. I could see a family sitting under the dim glow of a single street lamp in the balmy evening air, while their two children played football in the road. Apart from them, the night was quiet. This was a residential street away from the main action. It did not look like the setting for a pioneering boutique restaurant.

But then a slow strain of salsa sidled out of a closed gate. I followed my ears, and then my nose, into a charming garden terrace with ambient candle lighting, an open kitchen and a handwritten chalkboard menu of nouveau Cuban cuisine, something previously unheard of in this country. Attractive, well-dressed couples were sharing artfully prepared plates packed with ingredients I didn't know you could get here.

Habana Chef is not a restaurant you would expect to find in a country with a reputation for banal, verging on ghastly, cuisine. For many years, this reputation was deserved. I ate the most inedible meal of my life here. A so-called Italian restaurant served coagulated maize starch and milk with gristly meat and watered-down tomato ketchup, calling it lasagne. Until recently such dishes were fairly standard. Lasagne sheets were impossible to come by and al dente was not in the Cuban cooking vocabulary.

This wasn't always the case in Cuba, a country with abundant natural resources full of people who love to eat and socialise. Before the 1959 revolution, it was known as a place of decadent indulgence in drinking and dining, as well as other less savoury pursuits. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Cuba's main economic support in the years following the revolution – the country fell into a swift decline. In typical Castro-speak, this is referred to as the Special Period. Rationing, food shortages and general poverty meant haute cuisine was not a top priority for the average Cuban; survival was.

In the absence of market pressures, the state-run restaurants had little incentive to innovate. The only places you could hope to get a decent dinner were the paladares – the home-run restaurants that started up during Fidel Castro's first brief fling with the idea of privatisation, back in 1999. With notable exceptions such as La Guarida in central Havana, these were mainly basic mom-and-pop affairs serving only a higher class of the ubiquitous pollo y arroz. Many later crumbled under the burden of red tape imposed by officious inspectors.

But all of this has started to change thanks to President Raúl Castro's 2010 reform programme, which saw the laws on private enterprise loosened. In the months that followed more than a quarter of a million entrepreneurs applied for licences, an estimated 22% of which were in the service industry. By 2011, snack carts, shops in front porches and street vendors had appeared everywhere, and 2012 has seen a boom in paladares, with new ventures opening weekly.

But it's not just the number of venues that has changed the culinary landscape of the city; it's the quality. In recent months, hole-in-the-wall Spanish joint El Chanchullero has breathed new life into the previously limited options of the old town, and bohemian bar Café Madrigal in film-maker Rafael Rosales's home has started attracting a creative, arty crowd to drink daiquiris and snack on late-night tapas in his airy loft space. In the suburb of Miramar, Calle Diez and BellaHabana offer chic, understated luxury.

"I wanted to create somewhere people would spend their whole evening," said Michel Miglis, Cuban-Swedish owner of Casa Miglis, which opened in April. "You start with cocktails at the bar, and then after dinner the lights go down, the music goes up, and you can stay until the early hours. It may be normal in Europe, but somewhere like this just didn't exist in Cuba before."

Influenced by avant-garde cinema, the chic yet surreal design is fabulously playful, with furniture suspended above ground and art popping out from the walls. Reflecting his roots, the menu serves an interesting fusion of Cuban and Swedish cuisine, with dishes such as shrimp skagen (on toast) and saffron seafood casserole.

This change in attitude to aesthetics and atmosphere reflects Havana's status as an increasingly modern city, influenced by international trends as much as any capital. This has drawn out from the former culinary desert a new generation of gastronauts. Often looking to the country's pre-Revolution history for inspiration, they are carving out what is becoming a nouveau Cuban cuisine.

The menu at Nao, the chef explains, harks back to the time of the conquistadores, with a delicious mix of Spanish, African and Caribbean, and is both exceptional and reasonably priced. Its wooden beams, marine antiques and deep red walls make it feel like dining in the captain's quarters of an 18th-century galleon. It also does a mean piña colada.

But the problems of the past haven't vanished overnight, and despite government encouragement, enterprises such as these still face serious difficulties, from blackouts to a continual struggle for supplies.

"The economic situation makes it very hard to find certain ingredients," said owner Gregorio Nunez. "Every day we have men scouring the country in search of what we need. Sometimes they have to travel from market to market, because one town may have the whole country's supply of tomatoes, but no salt. It's an administrative problem."

Every restaurateur cites the same challenge – a permanent battle against baffling bureaucracy. The black market is a distinctly grey area here: for example, it is illegal to sell lobster outside government-run restaurants, and so paladares call it "chicken of the sea". In addition, the rumour of an imminent 100% tax on imported goods – the lifeblood of many small businesses – has everyone worried.

Precarious as this nascent industry may be, many industrious Habaneros have jumped at the opportunity.

"People want to be proud of their country, and for those who come here to enjoy the food and culture," said Adalberto Rodriguez, marketing manager at rum maker Havana Club, who is also involved with art gallery-cum-restaurant La Galeria. "There is also a great desire to find satisfaction in building business. I am passionate about food, as all Cubans are, but primarily I saw the opportunity to make something for myself."

State salaries in Cuba are on average $20 a month – even a doctor or an architect can be taking home as little as $2 a day. The incentive to switch careers is clear when a meal at many of these restaurants costs a month's wages or more.

But can the small number of wealthy Cubans and the tourist trade support this deluge of new restaurants? For the first time, ferocious market competition has made restaurateurs up their game, and the customer is now king. Perhaps they won't all survive this private business boom, but what will be left is a complete revolution of the culinary landscape, and visitors will enjoy discovering a contemporary food culture in its infancy.