Day: December 29, 2014

by

Dinner at Miguel’s

My cousin came over to Isla this evening so we could hang out together and have dinner. I wrote down the destination instructions for the pulmonĂ­a and she had no trouble getting to the embarcadero, although she did get a lecture from the driver, who wanted to make sure that she knew where she was going and that she wasn’t going to wander around the docks by herself. This is a gal who is a seasoned traveler and spends a lot of time in Panama so I had spared her that speech, but she got it anyway!

We decided to go to dinner at Miguel’s, the only proper sit down restaurant that is open in the evenings here. I’d heard a lot of good things about it. Contessa, Colin, Juan, and Chris were finishing up a meal as we arrived.

The menu is painted onto the wall and there are no prices listed. My cousin asked about a dish that, of course, the name escapes me now after I spent time repeating it! Dang. Oh, possibly chorreada! That’s a real word from the verb ‘to drip’ and the meal was drippy, so maybe that’s it! At any rate, the ingredients that stuck out were pork (which I know as carne de cerdo, but the cook called puerco), chihuahua cheese, and salsa fresca. My cousin ordered that. I went for a shrimp burrito.

Our meals came with just a little salad, but no other sides. We sampled each other’s dish. OMG. The burrito was a flour tortilla with sweet shrimp and cheese then fried in a pan (not deep fried). The pork dish was incredibly flavourful, with marinated meat and browned cheese over a thick corn tortilla, made even better with the addition of avocado sauce! The food was so good and we were so hungry that we ordered another round, reversing our orders!

My cousin also ordered a limonada and it was HUGE. We had brought beer, so I didn’t order anything to drink. The limonada was tasty, but too sweet for me anyway.

The total bill was absurd. Two shrimp burritos, two of the pork things, and a limonada came to 150 pesos (my treat). Let’s just say I’m no longer splurging on the very odd lunch on the beach and will instead go more often to Miguel’s in the evening! I want to work my way through the entire menu!!!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I’ll have to go back and get some at a later date. 🙂

 

by

Mexican Coffee, Strike One

I’m not a real coffee snob in that if I find a supermarket brand that is acceptable, that’s fine by me. I do prefer to get fresh grounds and grind them myself, but with my mix of itinerant and deep rural lifestyle, that’s just not realistic anymore. It’s not a problem in Canada where Nabob Full City Metropolis or Co-Op dark roast coffee never fail to brew up a satisfying cup.

I haven’t had as much luck in the US finding a good and ubiquitous grocery store brand. I usually get Starbucks, which, frankly, isn’t that great, but at least is reliable. I am now on the dregs of the back of Starbucks coffee I brought from the States.

Before going to a coffee house here to get pricey whole beans, I decided to try out supermarket coffee offerings. Ley pretty much only had instant coffee. The only ground coffee was mixed with sugar. Dale says it’s great and has been chugging it down, but I don’t like sugar in my coffee.

So at Soriana yesterday, I checked out what they had for ground coffee. It was all pretty much the same, Mexican Arabica beans in a medium roast, no dark roast or even espresso available. A 250g bag of ÂĄVive cafĂ©! Santa Fe coffee was the cheapest option at 45 pesos. I don’t buy into the myth that the cheapest coffee is the worst or the most expensive is the best, so I decided to try that.

I opened it up this morning to check it out even though I had some Starbucks left. I figured that if the Santa Fe wasn’t good, I could at least mix it with the Starbucks to get something relatively palatable until I get something else.

Even though the bag said the coffee is good till January of 2016 (a full year from now), it smelled stale at opening, very woody. It turned the water brown and that’s it. It already had the strike of being a medium roast against it, but I’ve had drinkable medium roasts before and this sure wasn’t one! I’ll have Dale try it and see if it passes her test. She puts so much cream and sugar in hers that she herself admits that she doesn’t taste much coffee anyway.

I’m going to give one more grocery store brand a try only if I find a dark roast. Otherwise, off to the roasting house I go!