Traveling While Introverted

It’s been just over two months since we left the United States to begin our Grand Latin American Tour. I’ve realized that I can’t plan everything in detail because you have to go with the flow. You might think you’ll love a place but the reality may be different and you need to give yourself permission to stay longer or leave earlier than whatever loosey-goosey plan you’ve hatched in your head. So, I can’t research restaurants ahead of time. The internet can only help so much when so many restaurants don’t have a website or a published menu. Plus half the time the map app will tell me a restaurant is open when it’s not. (Don’t talk to me about Yelp. Who are these people making these recommendations? According to those people I should be obsessed with matcha. Gross and no thank you.) Anyway, two months in and I’m learning to let things go, which has been very challenging. Plus, after Costa Rica, I didn’t want to have high expectations for the food in Panamá.

But then we landed in Panamá City and went out to lunch at a random place called La Pulperia. Y’all. We are back in Flavor Town! We ordered: the grilled octopus* on roasted potatoes with garlic aioli, head-on shrimp in a coconut curry sauce with yuca, and grilled filet of fish with coleslaw and more yuca. Scrumptious. For USA readers: apparently there’s also a restaurant in San Francisco. You should go if you can.

*We generally do not eat octopus because they’re such intelligent aliens that deserve our respect, but we needed a break from land animals. Why are octopi so smart and so yummy?

Since Panama City is so cosmopolitan, it was easy to find other cuisines we love. For lunch one day we visited Cocina de la India and the food was spicy and full of wonderful gravy. (Photo on the left, from top-down: mutton vindaloo, aloo gobhi, aloo bhindi masala, and chicken curry.) Another day, we found a cafe along the Amador Causeway that serves dim sum, which Adam tried and thoroughly enjoyed. (Center and right photos.)

Spanish cuisine is one of Adam’s favorites and it had been a long time since we had any tapas. It felt a shame not to take advantage of an opportunity to visit Tasca La Candelaria in Casco Viejo. Our server was top notch and didn’t bat an eyelid when we told him about my allergies. (He has a dairy allergy too, so it makes sense.) We ordered a lot of food, but the highlights are below. Cold anchovies in good olive oil, a cold seafood mix in olive oil, seafood rice, roasted eggplant with an aquafaba creamy something on top, and roasted local peppers. Adam even ordered the Spanish creme brûlée, which tasted like a slightly thicker French-style creme brûlée. (Fun side story: the eggplant usually comes with a dairy sauce but the chef made the aquafaba foam just for me. The lesson here is to tell people what you need because you never know how they may surprise you. Just don’t be a jerk about it.)

One night for dinner, we decided to find a place with vegetarian dishes. The restaurant next door to our hotel had an excellent menu and was so colorful, so we decided to give it a try. The food was great; however, upon closer inspection, the murals on the walls were very strange. On the one hand, a mural said to use condoms but that abortion is murder no matter what. Another mural made fun of taking photos of food and making them Instagramable, but the restaurant also encouraged patrons to take photos and tag them on IG. Above the bar where we were sitting was a naked woman with a penis where her belly button would be, which I think was a comment about how we’re all masculine and feminine, not necessarily pro-LGBTQ. Regardless of my political views, it just seemed so in-your-face that I was caught off guard. Still, the food was great.

Pictured above: a beautiful green salad with lots of veggies in a tahini-based green goddess dressing; corn elote (sans the queso, obvs), and an excellent lemony hummus served with big hunks of patacones (aka tostones or fried green plantains). Friends, let’s normalize serving hummus with patacones. It’s so much better than any other chip or vegetable.

Remember that super saucy pizza Adam had in Costa Rica? It wasn’t terrible, but I don’t think it really satisfied his pizza craving. We fixed that in Panamá City at La Rana Dorada, a brewery named after the oh-so-adorable Panamanian golden frog. Look at this beautiful, thin margarita pizza! I had the fish ceviche with plantain chips.

Cities with diverse culinary options often also have legacies of restaurants that survive generation after generation. I love a restaurant that’s clearly been around for a long time and hasn’t changed much because what it serves is beloved by the community. After we explored Ancón Hill and Mi Pueblito, we wanted to take a chance on a dim sum/pan-Asian restaurant. Sadly, it was closed (see? can’t trust the internet) so we had to pivot. That’s how we found the Cafe Coca Cola, the only restaurant legally allowed to use Coca Cola in its name. It’s one of those places that you have to just sit at a table to call it your own and the servers are so busy you have to call them. It was fast-paced, cheap, delicious, and wonderfully nostalgic. Besides sharing a very fresh Greek salad (no feta), I ordered a rotisserie chicken, and Adam ordered the pig leg and ham toasted sandwich.

One of the draws of visiting the Albrook Mall, besides some good ol’ 90s walk-around-the-mall–with-your-boo nostalgia and free A/C, was the food court. Is there an anthropological study about mall food courts? If not, someone should get on that. Mall food courts have to meet specific criteria: the meals have to be quick (for patrons and employees), affordable (think teens, families, and the elderly), and it should be comforting and familiar. Plus, there’s an opportunity to pig out because it’s so affordable and you’re having a fun day (unless you’re working at the mall). When else can you eat a whole bucket of fried chicken in public and not be judged for it?

It should be no surprise we made the rounds. We started out at Filipino-inspired place and ordered the fried pork belly with rice (left photo). It was okay, but a little flavorless. The chicharron was exceptionally porky tasting and I didn’t like it. Next we opted for the Chinese food because we’re 818 kids and that’s always a good choice, at least in the U.S. Adam ordered the chow mein, beef with veggies, and a beet-potato-egg salad. I opted for the rib (it only came with one), fried rice, and the beet-potato-egg salad as well. (Center and right photos.)

Does the Chinese food look good? Because it wasn’t. It was some of the worst food we have both eaten in years. The noodles and rice tasted like a burnt pan; both meat options were flavorless and soggy; and, the salad tasted like refrigerator lettuce. We were so disappointed and tried to pick at it, but we didn’t eat it. What a waste of food and resources!

Then, our luck changed. Adam had noticed a steakhouse earlier but I thought it wouldn’t be good because who orders steak at a mall? He was right, though. We ordered a hunk of beef with a double helping of salad & roasted veggies (left photo). It was just the right amount of food for us to share and get back to walking around the mall. As we were leaving the food court, we spotted the dessert section. Who needs ice cream when you can have fresh churros with a guava jam dipping sauce or a mango-kiwi paleta (center and right photos)? I love that folks in Latin America understand you can have a flavorful popsicle without dairy.

There were so many more meals, but I’ve got one more to share. Casco Viejo is next to a large dock with a seafood market that is open to the public. Connected to the market itself are a few seafood restaurants, some nicer than others, that are open for lunch and dinner. As we walked into the restaurant area, servers lined up to show us their menus and some of them even tried to pull Adam to one of the tables. Competition is very tough when everyone is serving the same type of cuisine! To avoid feeling overwhelmed, we decided to pick a restaurant from a safe and quiet distance based on how they looked. We ordered the ceviche which came in an old-timey ice cream glass and saltine crackers (a bold choice); shrimp in a maracuyá (tangy passion fruit) sauce and patacones, and head-on shrimp in a coconut milk sauce with yuca. It was definitely fresh, but the house hot sauce was the true star of the show.

For those reading this and wondering when I’ll ever get to talk about libraries and Jews, I have some good news. There are libraries and Jewish communities all over Panamá! So stay tuned and nerd out with me. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to Traveling While Introverted so you don’t miss it!