Panama NYT Resto guide
Transcript of Panama NYT Resto guide
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11/2/2014 In Panama City, Mixing Global and Local Flavors - NYTimes.com
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TRAVEL | HEADS UP
In Panama City, Mixing Global and LocalFlavors
By NICHOLAS GILL MARCH 18, 2014
One hundred years after the opening of the Panama Canal — which
continues to bring in immigrants of different ethnicities whose foods
dominate Panama City’s culinary scene — a new Panamanian cuisine is
emerging, one that looks inward while embracing its diversity. Panama
City, admittedly, has very few original dishes. You are more likely to dine
on spanakopita or chow mein than saus, pickled pig’s feet or the chicken
stew called sancocho. That’s changing. Everywhere you look, ambitious
young chefs and entrepreneurs are adapting local ingredients to global
trends, ranging from Southern barbecue to Japanese-Peruvian fusion.
The movement is being pushed along by Panama Gastronomica, an
annual event since 2010 that brings in foreign chefs to Panama City to
lecture culinary students. The late August conference is set within a
larger, public festival that showcases Panamanian restaurants and
products, ranging from food trucks like La Tapa de Coco selling Afro-
Panamanian dishes to Proyecto Paila, a forward thinking culinary
collective, selling hot sauces made from the native ají chombo pepper.
“We have all the elements to inspire us: products, a beautiful country
with history, a group of restless chefs from diverse backgrounds,” said
Elena Hernández, president of Panama Gastronomica, who runs a
cooking school. “It’s a historical moment in which cuisine has become
very important.”
AtHumo (Calle 70 Este, at Avenida 5C Sur; 507-203-7313;
humopanama.com) in the San Francisco neighborhood, the owner and
the executive chef Mario Castrellón adapts American barbecue to
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Panamanian ingredients. You’ll find brisket that has been smoked with
nance wood ($17) and farm-raised octopus with sugar cane syrup ($11).
Much of the produce comes from Mr. Castrellón’s four-year-old
restaurant Maito (Calle 50E and Calle 79E; 507-391-4657;
maitopanama.com) nearby, which has an organic garden of more than
1,000 square feet, growing culantro, ají chombo, ñame (a root vegetable)
and micro sprouts. The restaurant offers 10-course-tasting menus ($50)
reflecting the history of the canal, incorporating the different ethnicities
involved in its creation and the plants and animals around it, in dishes
like Ta-Bien, a banana-leaf-wrapped Afro-Antillean seafood stew-filled
tamal, and won ton soup flavored with achiote.
“All of the people that passed through left us with a bit of their
culture,” Mr. Castrellón said. “The Chinese gave us bistec picado.
Antilleans gave us our tasty octopus with coconut. The Spanish our
sancochado.”
The Spanish chef Andrés Madrigal once helmed various Madrid
restaurants such as Balzac and Alboroque. Last August, he opened
Madrigal (Avenida A at Calle Fifth Oeste; 507-211-1956) in a beautifully
renovated two-level building in the Casco Viejo historic district.Surprisingly 90 percent of the ingredients are Panamanian, like the little-
known root vegetable otoe, but he’s putting his own spin on them, like
stuffing canelones with ropa vieja ($14) or creating an inverse cheese tart
inspired by the Valle de Antón, a town in the crater of an inactive volcano
($8), with chocolate crumbles standing in for volcanic soil that’s topped
with edible flowers.
Aided by prize money from a competition at Panama Gastronomica2012, Hernán Correa Riesen opened Riesen (Calle D, Casa 16; 507-264-
0473; riesenpanama.com) in January 2013 in a small space in El
Cangrejo. There are fewer than a dozen plates driven by what he can get
that day from local farmers and fishermen, like hojaldre con lechona
($9), a sort of Panamanian fry bread topped like a taco with tender pork
and culantro cream, and yucca churros ($9), served with shredded beef
and a guava barbecue sauce.The most eclectic menu can be found at La Trona on the second floor
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of the former residence of a queen of the traditional folkloric pollera
costume, known for her over-the-top style. La Trona (Calle 48, Bella
Vista; 507-396-9230) is decorated with coffered ceilings, red curtains,
wrought-iron windows and gaudy Renaissance-style oil paintings. In this
two-year-old restaurant, the young chef Alfonso de la Espriella’s menu
jumps around from the Mediterranean to South America, not shying
away from pairing Peruvian huancaina sauce ($17.75) with locally caught
grouper or sriracha mayonnaise with crab cakes ($14).
In the posh Bristol boutique hotel at Salsipuedes (Avenida
Aquilino de la Guardia, 507-264-0000; salsipuedespanama.com), named
after a landmark street of Chinese and Panamanian merchants that dates
to the 17th century, the celebrity chef Cuquita Arias de Calvo
contemporizes regional dishes and ingredients. A Panamanian sampler
board ($14) lays out artisanal chorizos, smoked beef pâté, cassava fritters,
ají chombo hot pepper jelly and michita, a traditional egg bread baked in
a wood fired oven. Her most popular dish? A degustation of arroz con
leche ($13.50): rum raisin, key lime pie, pineapple rice and eggnog.
A version of this article appears in print on March 23, 2014, on page TR4 of the New York
edition with the headline: Panama City Brings the World’s Flavors to Its Tables.
© 2014 The New York Times Company