Miami Food Blog

I'm going to wrap up this short little porthole into Costa Rican cuisine talking a little bit about everything -- probably in a very rambling, tangential sort of way. Just a fair warning.

Native fruit is definitely one of the more unique aspects of eating in Costa Rica. You've got your average tropical fair, of course, including bananas and oranges and mangos and guayaba (guava). but then you've got oddities like this:

That disgusting looking spewdum of goo and seeds is a granadilla, and it's perhaps one of the most nectary-sweet, delicious fruits you're going to find in Costa Rica. Yes, it feels like half-melted Jello in your mouth; like the forest's answer to raw quail egg. But there is something faintly, well...erotic about supping on the life-giving goo within the fruit. Obviously someone else thought so too: the granadilla is just one very-ugly-but-tasty variety of what's referred to as passiflora ligularis, or passion fruit.

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One of Costa Rica's many beach-side sodas, shaded from the hot coastal sun by an umbrella of tall trees.

Yesterday I talked a little bit about Costa Rica's plato tipical, casado - and more specifically, rice and beans. Now, when you're producing rice and beans in such quantities as to make it the central aspect of a plate, you're bound to have some leftovers. Like cold pizza or breakfast burritos, Costa Ricans adapt these heaps of leftovers into gallo pinto: a saute of black beans and rice along with cilantro, onion, and pepper. It basically becomes a flavorful sort of fried rice, turned black or light brown by the natural sauce of the beans. Gallo pinto is served primarily for desayuno (breakfast), but I did find it later in the day at a few places.

A view of Volcan Arenal from a hiking trail that traverses old lava flow from its 1992 eruption. Arenal is the third most active volcano in the world.

We hiked through rainforests and gasped at volcanoes, lounged on white sand beaches and wound our way around perilous mountain passes. Oh yes, we also ate. I just returned from six days in Costa Rica, one of the many ecological jewels of Central America, and aside from taking in an almost unfathomable level of sheer natural beauty we ate our weight in tropical fruits, fresh ceviche, and, of course, rice and beans.

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Lee Klein

We loved everything about M Restaurant (Kertész u. 48), including the goose leg gobbled in the photo above. We’d arrived into the city at dusk, showered, and headed out a bit weary after a very long ride in a van (from Skopje). We were going to eat at Carmel Pince, which was close by, but we were turned away at the door -- it was Sabbath, and pre-reservations were necessary. We asked a passerby for advice, and he steered us across town to what turned out to be a stretch of numerous outdoor cafes lined up one after another. A few of the places looked all right, but it was too touristy a spot. So we stopped a couple who looked like they might be a Hungarian version of us, and explained that we were looking for a regular place, where locals go, and where the food was authentic and tasty. To the couple’s credit they took quite a bit of time deciding, discussing among themselves pros and cons of various places, and eventually came up with M -- which was right by where we’d just walked from. It turned out to be exactly what we were looking for.