In Cambodia during Pol Pot’s violent and inhumane regime, millions were relocated and forced into slave labor in the countryside in an attempt to create an “agrarian utopia,” which consequently sparked widespread famine. This is when insects and arachnids entered the Cambodian diet. Today, fried crickets, beetles and tarantulas are sold in markets, on the street and in restaurants.

I’m pretty adventurous when it comes to trying new foods. The only thing that tends to make me queezy is a viscous texture. (Read my earlier post Snot Yam and Hairy Chicharrones.) So when I popped the large, pilose spider into my mouth, I just hoped the bulbous body did not explode with a mucilaginous surprise. Check out our bizarre foods audition by ContemporaryNomad.com:

Heading to Montezuma, I expected to have to suffer through the overpriced and unimaginative cuisine typical of touristy beach communities. As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Along the two short, bohemian blocks forming Montezuma’s center, there are several gourmet and health conscious restaurants and coffee shops.

Picture this, only to describe a few. (I won’t give you the names so that you can take your own culinary adventure!):

Breakfast: a homemade bagel topped with cream cheese, locally smoked fish (delicious) and red onion. Wash it down with a huge mug of fresh coffee. Meanwhile, bask in the warm breeze blowing through the open-air café and let yourself embark on food dreams as you read appetizer favorites such as fig-and-cheese crostinis chalked on the wall. Top it off with a freshly picked, red hibiscus flower delivered to your table by the charming cook!

Lunch: after hiking to the local waterfall, a cold glass of agua de pipa, or coconut juice, lowers the body temperature. And a bowl of fresh black beans, salsa and guacamole atop a bed of dark greens decorated with homemade corn tortilla chips gives you a healthy jump-start.

Dinner: Believe it or not, you might want to order steak instead of seafood. The incredibly tender and perfectly cooked lomito al gorgonzola may draw me back sooner than later to Montezuma. My only complaint, like in many parts of Costa Rica, is that restaurants don’t serve decent house wines. I support CAFTA for the simple fact that it may encourage restaurateurs to select something other than Frontera Cabernet Sauvignon.

Dessert: When an entire refrigerator at the local supermarket is dedicated to champagne and chocolate, you know the town means decadent business. In fact, one hip hole-in-the-wall offers coffee or its homemade dessert ― buried underneath a scoop of vanilla ice cream and chocolate ― complimentary.

Combined with an unhurried ambiance and what appears to be sustainable development, Montezuma, Costa Rica sent me home with that been-relaxing-at-the beach-all-week look…without the extra kilos!

To get to Montezuma, fly into Tambor or take the adventurous three-hour bus and boat combination from San José described here.

Here are a few fun spots you can weave into your itinerary:

Best local café: The colonial era post office in downtown has just been renovated. It’s amazing what a little paint can do! On the first floor of the building’s northern side sits Café del Correo. The café has two separate rooms and plenty of seating. The hard chairs don’t invite lingering, but the historical location combined with one of the city’s best espresso bars makes for a great place to catch your breath.
Best local lunch spot: Attracting the professional downtown crowd with good food and a hip atmosphere is the Q’Café. There are a few places to sit downstairs which is great if you just want to have coffee, but if you’re having lunch, definitely head to the open-air, upstairs area.

Best local gelato: There are two pedestrian walkways in downtown San José – Avenida Central and Avenida 4. On Avenida 4 between Calle 1 and 3, stands the Art Barista Café and Restaurant. Just beyond the colonial façade, you’ll find trays of fresh gelato. Passion fruit is the flavor that keeps me coming back.
Best local pit stop: When you decide you’ve dodged enough pedestrians, raced across enough crosswalks and explored enough shops and museums, escape to the second floor of the Libreria Lehmann on Avenida Central. Winding up a flight of wooden stairs just beyond the main entrance, you will arrive at Café Latino. In addition to good coffee and fruit drinks, there is wireless internet and a terribly comfortable sofa. The tables by the widow peer down on Avenida Central.

Best local happy hour: Attracting largely an expat crowd , News Café on the ground floor of Hotel Presidente mixes great drinks and is a prime people watching location ― in terms of the customers as much as the passerbys. As far as bars go in the downtown area, this is the liveliest early evening spot.

If you’ve been to any one of these places, please tell us about it. If you have any other suggestions, please share!

While I was walking around the central plaza in Heredia, Costa Rica this weekend, a silver tray containing rolled tacos the size of a banana caught my eye. Coins rattled to the background of two sizzling vats of grease as the cash register drawer opened and closed. The single hot food display case, just steps from the sidewalk, housed rolled tacos, fried chicken and chicharrones. The menu also listed hamburgers and hot dogs.

One “Super Taco” please, I said. I didn’t see a Super Taco “combo” option, so I just decided to order it and see what happened. In SoCal, rolled tacos are usually set upon a bed of shredded lettuce and topped with guacamole and cheese.

Wearing a short-sleeved, neatly pressed white shirt and a cap, the cook gently submerged the rolled taco into the vat. He turned and pulled a hand towel-size sheet of wax paper from a box and placed it on a cutting board. With thongs, he picked up a clump of shredded cabbage and placed it on the paper and then doused the greens with mayonnaise.

Turning right without moving his feet, he lifted the taco out of the grease. Saving me from extra calories, he let the taco move to a slow drip and then he placed it on top of the mixture. At the blink of an eye he had grabbed the four corners of the wax paper, lifted everything into the air and twirled the mixture shut. The taco package ended up in a paper bag along with a fork and a napkin.

I indulged on a nearby park bench. The tortilla was crisp but it didn’t break apart when I ate it. Generously stuffed with shredded beef, the Super Taco was a meal in itself―a new, messy favorite.

In San José, Costa Rica, several new sushi places have opened up in the Escazú area of town, where a large number of the expat population lives. On the university end of town, which is popular in a more bohemian sense, you can find a couple of older Japanese spots as well as a fancy new one boasting a Peruvian flair. Both of the place pictured below are in San Pedro.

“Blend” being Peruvian.

Sushi is a big hit in Panama, too. I met a Panamanian sushi chef last month while writing a review of a new Vegas-like casino in the middle of Panama City. He runs the lobby sushi bar. I asked him where he learned to make sushi and interestingly he studied in Columbia with a Filipino chef. He created nigiri sushi and sushi rolls in meticulous Japanese fashion, with painstaking attention to detail. The result — a flavorful and artfully-presented dish.

However, after two years in Japan, I am undoubtedly going to scrutinize dishes. And to be completely honest, all of the sushi I’ve eaten so far just hasn’t been made with the “sticky” rice I’ve come to love. It’s always a bit crunchy. I’m all for cultures adapting and reinventing dishes — the Japanese are great at adding their special twist to foreign imports, but I personally prefer a stickier version of rice.

With growing interest in Japanese food, a new group has formed to tackle the sticky rice issue along with other Japanese culinary faux pas. Would you believe there is a new Japanese non-profit tasked with addressing international sushi standards? Read more about the Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad (JRO).

Known as Costa Rican guava in English, Psidium friedrichsthalianum, has various names throughout Latin America: cas or cas ácida in Costa Rica, guayaba ácida in Guatemala, guayaba agria in Colombia, guayaba de danto in Honduras, guayaba de agua in Panama, guayaba del Choco in Ecuador, guayaba montes in Mexico, guayaba in Nicaragua, and arrayan in El Salvador.

A friend brought a handful over a couple of months ago and blended up the most thirst quenching drink. Just four cases with about three cups of water and ½ cup sugar was enough to make a full pitcher. Fresco de cas or cas juice is very sour initially, like lemonade, but after adding sugar it turns sweet and tart. The biggest difference between cas juice and lemonade is the consistency. Cas juice is thick with an ice cream-like texture and doesn’t have lemonade’s pulpy bits.

The lemon flavor reminded me of that lovely cocktail called margarita, so I decided to create my own cas concoction and add a little bit of rum to the mix. I think I’ve stumbled upon something here!

Read more about the diverse world of Costa Rican fruit here.

My roommate picked me up a traditional Costa Rican cookbook the other day. A lot of people dismiss Costa Rican food as bland and boring, but I’ve discovered several dishes that will bring you back for seconds. In my new recipe collection, I looked for something involving pejibaye – a delicious chestnut-flavored fruit from the palm tree (read about my trip to the annual Pejibaye festival). Cream of pejibaye soup caught my eye and I set off to the market to buy the few, simple ingredients.

First, I peeled and seeded about 7 pejibayes.

I chopped an onion and sautéed it in margarine until it crystallized.

I added the onion, the pejibayes and two cups of water to the blender.

I added the blended mixture into a pot to cook with just over two cups of milk and a cube of chicken broth. Some people use whipping cream instead of milk, but that’s a bit too heavy for my taste.

Voilá – my first attempt at cream of pejibaye soup. Next time, I’ll follow the recommendation to top the soup with fresh parsley.

A no-hassle cooking, and cleaning up day to say the least. This was an easy and deliciously simple dish. It’s a keeper.

I rediscovered the eggy emulsion when I moved to Japan. I was hesitant to eat it at first, but it was all over everything. True aficionados would even earn the Japanese moniker mayoler (マヨラー). There were reality TV shows with contestants trying to cook up the best mayonnaise recipe, and nowadays there is a popular restaurant in Tokyo that, among other mayo delights, serves up a mean “Mayogarita.” Uh, yum?

Japanese mayo is made with egg yolks, not the whites, and rice vinegar. The most popular brand is Kewpie, which I always recognize from the squeeze bottle and the naked baby logo. The naked baby logo is one of the many Japanese enigmas I have yet to explore. (Read a bit of Kewpie history on their Web site.)

When I returned to the States, I stopped eating mayonnaise again. I never had it in my fridge, always said no to it when ordering a Subway sandwich, and never squeezed it onto my fingertip to indulge in a dollop of the creamy goodness. Now, I’ve once again rediscovered the dietary crusher.

Costa Rican mayonnaise is creamy like its Japanese counterpart. It’s made from whole eggs, soy oil and vinegar. Colorful squeeze packets line the shelves tempting passerbys with unique flavors such as “lime” and “smoked.”

This unfair trend to the waistline is crossing into the States. Read the wonderful LA Times article which lists nine different recipes for flavored mayonnaise!

I don’t know why I added the exclamation mark; it’s bad enough with the flavorful selection I have at my fingertips, and on my fingertips, these days.

The fact is that wine is becoming a part of Costa Rican culture more and more. I just got back from the Auto Mercado supermarket which hosted a wine tasting event this weekend. Several producers had small stands throughout the aisles. Young servers wearing top hats poured samples and offered fruit, meat and cheese pairings.

There were a lot of the usual Chilean and Argentine wines, and also one from California called Fish Eye. I looked at Fish Eye’s Web site and it seems as though they have their marketing geared toward what could include a Costa Rican beach-going crowd. I haven’t seen a palapa-covered wine bar yet, and who’s to say that’s far-fetched!

I ended up sticking with a Chilean wine, Viu Manent, Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon, Valle de Colchagua which cost 5,700 colones, which is about $11. The Fish Eye reds were going for 7,000 colones.

I carried my purchase home in a cloth grocery bag—not yet a popular Costa Rican fashion item. (read previous post) I like to think this at least reduced my carbon footprint a bit. Now, if I take the bus back home for the holidays instead of the plane as planned, maybe this will balance out my impact for the year!

Read Whining about wine in Costa Rica (part 1)
Read Whining about wine in Costa Rica (part 2)