Costa Rican Food: Part II

As promised, here is another post about food! Trying new foods is one of my favorite things about traveling, so I'm one of those tourists who feels the need to photograph my food before eating it if it's something I've never had before (or if it's a familiar food that just looks especially beautiful on the plate). So without further ado, let's bring on the photo tour of the great food I've eaten since my last food-related post!

Baked Goods

When I was in Playa Chiquita, my roommate introduced me to these great sugar cookies made by a company near San Jose, so I got a package of my own and I was instantly in love. I also saw that the company makes more than just the cookies, so I also bought some empanadas, and got hooked on those as well haha. 

The delicious sugar cookies! They are called Galletas de Natilla, which translates to "cream cookies,"

Empanadas de Guayaba, or guava empanadas. The company also had empanadas de chiverre, which is a type of squash (spaghetti squash I think), and apparently those type of empanadas are traditional around Easter.

A single empanada so you can see it outside the package

Chocolate

The owner of Playa Chiquita Lodge also owns a cacao farm, and a few times the manager brought cacao to the lodge for us to try. Sylvia, my roommate, make the cacao into chocolate fondue, which was AMAZING! We had it a couple of times and I just couldn't stop eating it!

Chocolate!! With pineapple for dipping! Yum!

Vista Verde Lodge

The food where I'm volunteering now, Vista Verde Lodge in Monteverde, is delicious! The cook, Francisco, is amazing and everything he cooks tastes great! I've been eating very well for the past three weeks, and I'm going to miss the food when I leave in two days. You will notice that, as with most Costa Rican food, it is common to have rice and beans with some sort of meat, but Francisco always adds some variety so it never gets old. 

My lunch my first day: rice, greens, and fried plantains

Fish with rice, beans, plantains, and cabbage salad

Grilled chicken with rice, salad and avocado. The cat wanted some too. 

Rice and beans, plantains, and salchichon, which is a type of sausage

Agua dulce, a hot drink made with dried sugar cane juice in either hot water or milk (this one is in water)

Banana pancakes! These are some of the best pancakes I've ever had, I could probably eat them every day and not get tired of them. They are so good that many people post about them on TripAdvisor, so new guests arrive already knowing about them and wanting to try them. These are what I will miss the most about the food here, and I want to try to make them at home.

Sabor Tico Restaurant

Although I usually try to avoid eating at restaurants to save money, I let myself splurge on my days off here because I've spent so little money in Costa Rica (quick budget update, it's been about 7 weeks and I've only spent $400!). My first meal out was at Sabor Tico in Santa Elena, which the manager here recommended as having good typical Costa Rican food for a decent price. 

For an appetizer I ordered ceviche, a typical Costa Rican dish that consists of pieces of fish in a lemon juice marinade. My research told me that the fish is raw, but I couldn't tell when I was eating it. I wasn't sure I would like it but I wanted to try it because I kept hearing about it, and it was very tasty. For the main course I got a dish called Gallo de Gallina Achotado. According to the menu, gallos are common snacks, consisting of a corn tortilla with meat, cheese, beans, or picadillo (chopped veggies). Mine had chicken made with "grandmother's recipe," salad and pico de gallo. I also ordered a drink called Resbaladera, which is a cold drink made from cooked rice, milk, sugar and ground nuts. It was so good! It's similar to horchata, which was also on the menu, but horchata is made with rice milk and peanuts. 

Ceviche

My delicious meal: gallo de gallina achotado, ceviche, and resbaladera.

Morpho's Restaurant

My next day off I also went out to eat at another restaurant in Santa Elena that the manager of the hotel recommended. This one was called Morpho's, and was a little more expensive, but I still managed to get a drink, appetizer and main course for not too much by ordering some of the cheapest options. The decor of the restaurant was really cool, so I'm going to break the streak of only food pictures by adding some pictures of the restaurant. 

Inside Morpho's. Beautiful murals on the walls and butterfly sculptures hanging from the ceiling

Tree mural covering one wall and part of the ceiling

This time I got a fruit drink with papaya and pineapple. These types of drinks are usually called bebidas naturales (literally, "natural drinks"), and are very common on restaurant menus in Costa Rica. Most of them are just fruit blended with either water or milk, and some have ice or are made with frozen fruit so they are cold (the cold ones are sometimes called batidos, which means "smoothie" or "shake," so sometimes when I order a bebida natural I don't if it will be frozen or not). The one I got at Morpho's was frozen, and it was delicious!

For an appetizer I got what was called a Tapa Tropical, which was a corn tortilla with chicken, cheese and avocado. Very yummy! Then my main course was a sandwich with veggies and Monte Rico cheese, which is the special type of cheese developed by Monteverde Cheese Company (which you can read about here). 

Bebida natural with the Tapa Tropical

Sandwich with Monte Rico cheese

And that concludes my second post about Costa Rican food and drinks (if you missed my first one, you can check it out here). Hopefully I will have more delicious new foods in my next month or so in Costa Rica, and if I do, I will be sure to share them with you. Thanks for reading!