Two words: “rice and beans”. Common throughout Central America, this is the staple of Costa Rican cuisine. Gallo pinto is composed of rice and beans that are fried together in a brown sauce. It is customarily accompanied by some kind of meat (grilled or stewed) or eggs, fried yellow plantains (plátanos) and a cabbage salad (repollo) as part of a set meal (casado).

Other typical foods include:
• yucca – boiled or fried manioc, a fibrous tuber
• corn tortillas
• fried breadfruit
• chayote – boiled squash
• empanadas – fried turnovers stuffed with cheese, beans or meat
• ceviche – raw seafood salad marinated in lemon, sweet peppers, onion and cilantro
• patacones – fried green bananas, sort of like french fries, great with salt and ketchup
• palmitos – marinated hearts of palm
• Afro-Caribbean delights such as fish steeped in coconut milk and agua de sapo (literally “toad
water”, a refreshing, chilled drink made with ginger and lemon)

Traditional deserts include mazamorra – a type of cornstarch gelatin, cajeta – very sweet coconut patty, tres leches – a thick, layered pudding and flan – cold custard. Apart from the traditional fare of Costa Rica, ethnic restaurants such as Chinese, Italian and Mexican as well as many American-style fast food restaurants are becoming common.

By far the most wonderful food in Costa Rica is native fruit. There are scores to choose from; including the ones you are used to like apples, melons, oranges and grapes. Familiar tropical fruits like bananas, pineapples, mangoes, coconuts, avocados and papaya are also available. Then there are the ones that you don’t find in the supermarket in North America and Europe.

We recommend trying as many new fruits as you can. They are delicious, refreshing and best of all, very healthy. One of the most popular fruits is the guanabana. It grows to the size of a watermelon and has green, scaly skin and white, fleshy pulp with black, shiny seeds. It is very sweet and juicy, best made into juices, especially with milk.

Tart fruits like carambola (star fruit), chan and cas are also great as juice. Marañon, a fruit that looks like a small bell pepper with the cashew nut on top, is sweet, but has a starchy texture that some people find disagreeable. Then there’s the maracuyá (passion fruit), which has a rigid yellow, orange, or red skin and translucent flesh with a mucilaginous texture filled with small crunchy seeds. Some people never get over the texture, but those who do enjoy the tart flavor of this vine fruit.

Many ticos enjoy sour, under ripe mangoes or jocote, a small green or yellow fruit with a large seed, dipped in salt, or the starchy palm fruit pejibaye. Mamón chino is about the size of a golf ball with long, soft red spikes on the outside and a tart fruit clinging to a large seed on the inside. Try different fruit juices and combinations made with sugar and ice and water (fresca) or milk (batido).