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The food of Costa Rica

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These notes were made during a week long trip to Costa Rica. These are just our food experiences and you may have a totally different experience depending on your budget, where you travel and where you eat.

Notes from February 2005

Bread products are available in most towns, but are usually sweet. Mussanni is a chain of bakery stores found all over Costa Rica. They sponsor one of the local triathletes! Also packaged corn chips are a common snack food everywhere.

Some Costa Rican food (called 'Comidas') and drinks

• Casado - the word means 'marriage', but if you order this off the menu you will usually be served a mix of beans, rice, meat, cabbage salad and pasta.

• Gallo Pinto - the word means ´painted roster, but as food it is a mix of leftover rice and beans, and it is served with almost every meal.

• Frutus Bebidas - mixed fruit drinks served with agua (water) or leche (milk) and comes in a variety of tropical fruit flavours or mixto.

• Soda - this refers to a small locally run restaurant or cafe, always the place to eat if you are looking for an authentic Costa Rican meal.

• Vishnu - a chain vegetarian restaurant in Costa Rica, never seen elsewhere.

• mango salad - green mango slices served in a bag with a dash of salt, lime juice and sweet vinegar, this salad gives a real tang to the taste buds.

• Fruit Seller

  guaro - a local alcoholic drink, apparently potent (although we only tried one I still felt the effects), it is light rum made from sugar cane, served as ´guaro sour´ with lime juice and sugar syrup, or as ´guaro gin´.

• Noni fruit - the magical cure all fruit juice in Australia, is just a normal fruit here in Central America, and found in most local market places.
  

More Information

• read the food diary from other Central American countries: Honduras, Belize, Mexico , Nicaragua, Guatemala
• about foods from around the world
• photos from Costa Rica
• Travel Guide to Costa Rica