Eats and Drinks in Costa Rica

Typical Costa Rican Food  (comida tipica) 

Costa Rican breakfasts, lunches and dinners have two main ingredients in common: rice and beans.  Gallo Pinto is the traditional breakfast version and cascado contains the typical lunch or dinner version.

Gallo Pinto for Breakfast

This is a traditional Costa Rican dish of rice mixed with black beans and might include cilantro, red pepper or onions.  It was one of the selections every morning at our breakfasts and was served along side eggs, meats like sausage or chicken and was often accompanied by sour cream and Salsa Lizano, which is a little spicy and is similar to Worcestershire sauce but is made with local and creole ingredients.  There were always one or two natural fruit drinks, coffee and tea.  At one of our hotels there was also a smoothie bar for breakfast.  You could pick one or more of the fruit drinks and whatever fresh fruit you wanted and a chef would blend it up for you.  That was yummy!

I read about Rice n' Beans in Limon on the Caribbean coast, which is similar to Gallo Pinto but includes red beans, spicy Panamanian peppers and coconut milk.  It is supposed to be delicious, but not something we had the opportunity to try.

Cascado for Lunch or Dinner

Rice and beans are traditionally served for lunch and dinner as part of a Cascado, but are separate items rather than being mixed together like the Gallo Pinto.

A Cascado is a traditional well balanced meal that includes some type of meat or fish, a side salad, rice, black beans, and fried plantains.  It is usually served with a natural fruit drink.

Some combination of these items was served at all the included lunches and dinners on our trip, which were buffet style.  (The one exception: was the Farewell Dinner, which was a sit down dinner.)  Often there was a soup available - usually a squash soup or a seafood soup.  Always there was a salad bar that also included amazing fruit like pineapple, mango, papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe and oranges. There was usually some type of bread available as well and occasionally there would be dessert.  Besides the fruit drink, there would also be coffee, which was great in Costa Rica, and tea.

At several locations, off to the side of the main buffet line was a pasta bar.  You would select items to put in your pasta, the type of pasta and the sauce you wanted and hand it to the chef who would cook it up for you.  I guess this was to satisfy folks who didn't care for the simple traditional Costa Rican fare.

One place we were served dessert was Pozo Azul (see Day 5 of the blog).  They grow passion fruit on their organic farm and they served passion fruit cheesecake for dessert.  It was really good.

Passion fruit flower from the organic farm -- smells great

Passion Fruit Cheesecake from the kitchen --- Yum

Guaba 

When we were at the palm plantation, we sampled guaba or pacay, which is also know as the ice cream bean.  It is actually a legume, but the pulp is sweet, so it's used more for snacking and desserts.  The pods are about a foot long and not very thick.  When you crack one open, there is this white cottony pulp, sort of divided into segments and each segment contains a black seed.  You just take one of the segments and eat the pulp and spit out the seed.  The seeds are often used in the jewelry you see around Costa Rica.  We also had guaba juice in several locations during the week.

Dragon Fruit

Butch and I had dragon fruit ice cream and it was really good.  It was pinkish/purple and a little tangy.  Surprisingly enough, when we were back in the USA and shopping in Safeway, they were selling dragon fruit.  I decided I just had to try one and see if it tasted anything like the ice cream.

So, I couldn't get Butch to try the fruit, so this is only my opinion.  The fruit had very mild flavor and was not nearly as sweet nor tangy as the ice cream.  Also, the pulp was white.  I don't know if there are multiple varieties of dragon fruit and maybe that would explain the difference in the fruit and the ice cream or maybe it's just that if you add enough cream, sugar and coloring you can create whatever you desire!

Later....
After my comment above about maybe there being several varieties of pitaya aka dragon fruit, I did a little investigating and found out that there are two species and one of them, Stenocereus aka pitaya, is sour and refreshing with juicier flesh and a stronger taste than the other.  The other variety, Hylocereus aka pitahaya, has 3 different types.  One is Hylocereus undatus, which is the most commonly seen variety and is what I purchased at Safeway.  Then there is Hylocereus costaricensis,  which is red skinned and has red flesh and is native to Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  This is undoubtedly what the ice cream was made from.

However, the biggest surprise about dragon fruit is that is a cactus fruit (cereus in the name gives it away) and the Sonoran desert is one of the locations where it grows!  The fruit of the organ pipe cactus, which grows in AZ, is one of the Stenocereus varieties.

The cacti these fruits come from are night blooming cereus -- the flowers bloom at night and wilt in the morning.  Bats and moths are relied on for pollination.  We have a night blooming cereus in our front yard and it occasionally will get a smooth red fruit on it.  I have retrieved one or two and cut them open and eaten the pulp.  Their pulp is very much like that of the dragon fruit that I purchased at Safeway.  The birds love these fruits, however, so I let them have them plus they usually get to them before me.

Flower from the Costa Rican night blooming cereus

Flower from our night blooming cereus

Spirits

Coffee is obviously a big deal in Costa Rica and was excellent.  Also, the various natural fruit drinks were great.  Often I wasn't sure what I was drinking but I tried them all and loved them.  However, if you're looking for something a little stronger,  the advice I read is to avoid local wines.  They are made from fruits other than grapes -- blackberries for instance -- and result in monumental hangovers.  Instead, Chilean wines account for about 50% of the wine consumed in Costa Rica.  Argentinian and Spanish wine are second and third in popularity.

Imported spirits can be expensive, so Imperial and Bavaria, which are Costa Rican beers are very popular.  Joan and I enjoyed the Bavaria Dark beer, which was a German style dark beer.

Of course there is the national drink, Cacique Guaro, which is similar to rum and is often blended with fruit juice or coconut water.  See Day 7 in the blog for more information on guaro.

And last but not least, nothing says the tropics like Pina Coladas!

The best part are the little umbrellas!