By In my rush to complete my post I don’t feel like I went into enough detail about our food tour. I have a moment now, so thought I’d share.
Ricardo was our tour guide. He’s a teacher, pursuing a Master’s degree, when he’s not showcasing the culinary delights of Puerto Rico. Ricardo is super friendly and knowledgeable. I found it fascinating that his focus for his degree is on the Danish (not Dutch, Spanish, English) colonization and influence in the Caribbean. Fun fact – the US bought the Danish West Indies in 1917, renaming it the US Virgin Islands. Ricardo is a lover of education – it sounds like he’s going to pursue multiple master degrees. I really appreciated his enthusiasm and all his little nuggets of Puerto Rico that he shared along the tour.
We checked in at the bank (his text literally said go to the giraffe cat sculpture, you’ll know it when you see it).
Our tour was full (12 people). We got to introduce ourselves – it was fun to hear where folks were from. There was a trio down here to plan the bride’s wedding, a couple celebrating the wife’s bday, a couple taking advantage of the husband’s work conference, 2 solo travelers and our trio).
It was already hot and humid as we started off to our first course. Thank goodness I loaded up on sunscreen and brought a water bottle. First up was coffee and a pastry at Cuatro Sombras. https://cuatrosombras.com/ I had already had my caffeination of the day, but couldn’t resist this treat…mostly because the hotel coffee was gross. This coffee was pretty good, as was the guava pastry sample. I was hoping we’d make it back here to buy some beans, but our schedule was too packed.
Next up was a nice little walk to a plaza for our amuse bouche/palette cleanser. We had passion fruit popsicles which were good – nice and cool as the temperature started to rise. Ricardo told us the corn flavor is amazing, if you’re feeling adventurous. Just up the road from the ice cream shop was San Juan’s smallest home. It was a museum, but has struggled to have regular hours since hurricane Maria. https://www.discoverpuertorico.com/es/profile/senor-paleta-old-san-juan/5604
After a little more history about San Juan, we popped over to El Nido for appetizers – https://www.elnidopuertorico.com/pages/menu-de-el-nido
The little cornbread sticks were really good. I wasn’t fond of the cheese fritter in the middle (it wasn’t bad, I just think it was at room temperature and would have been more enjoyable if served really hot). The empanadilla was tasty. Random fact – Empanada in Puerto Rico is chicken fried steak. What we think of empanada are called empanadillas in Puerto Rico. No idea how that happened. It’s similar to the random fact that the town of San Juan was originally called Puerto Rico and the country was called San Juan…but they somehow got reversed.
Our ‘main course’ was mofongo at the oldest restaurant in San Juan – https://www.la-mallorquina.com/home. We had to work for our lunch, mashing our own plantains. They served Mojitos but I’m not a good day drinker, so my niece got to to enjoy that. Same issue as with the appetizers, the meal would have been better piping hot. I don’t think we were slow walkers or majorly delayed. I just think it’s a challenge to feed 12 people at the same time, so they probably made the food and placed it on the table early
Our dessert course was at this cute chocolate bar. https://www.chocobarcortes.com/old-san-juan/ We were sweaty and full but there is always room for dessert, especially when it involves chocolate.
Nearby is Drunken Cookie, which looked fun https://www.instagram.com/getdrunken/ …but we had to catch a ferry for our Bacardi tour.
You can find more about the food tour here.
