The Food So Far

So I had big plans to upload a bunch of pictures that had been clogging up my memory card since El Salvador. I tried to download them in Panama and got some weird virus notice but chalked it up to a computer that wasn´t working very well. Anyways, I went to try and salvage them today and discovered that my entire memory card had been corrupted and had to be reformatted. FUCK.

Instead, I´m going to write about the food so far. It´ll be a poor substitute, but all I´ve got.

Overall, the food has been very underwhelming. I would rank the tree countries I´ve spent any legth of time in the following descending order: El Salvador, Ecuador, and Panama bringing up the rear. El Salvador had the brilliant street food called the pupusa, which is esssentially why it is in first place. To make it you take some masa, fill it with your choice of meat, beans and cheese and throw it on a griddle for 5 or 10 minutes. It´s essentially a tiny quesadilla, but the tortillas are cooked at the same time as you warm everything in the middle up. You then top it with pickeld cabbage and hot sauce for a delicious meal. They cost $.30-$.40 apiece, and three or four are a good sized meal. I have a mad scheme to open a stand in SF on the street serving them when I get back to support myself. I doubt the economics really work though...

Beyond that, El Salvador had some well prepared seafood, which wins it my top spot.

Panamanian food was not very good at all. Comida criolla was pretty bad - essentially an awfull mishmash of Chinese, Itallian and local stuff. I never got it, but saw people eating plates of warmed-over fried rice together with spahgetti with marinnaram pretty often. Most of the seafood was overcooked and meats were pretty bland. There wasn´t even any widely available hot sauce that was any good. The one exception to this was some good ceviche, specifically at the main fish market in Panama City (Bourdain fans should recall the location). However, I also had some pretty bad ceviche that balances out the really good stuff. I really wish I could have just eaten at the fish market every day and cooked for myself the rest of the time.

I haven´t eaten enough in Ecuador to make any wider judgements, but it wins points for not being Panama. Speaking of which, I´m starving and am headed out onto the mean streets of Quito to stuff my maw.