Eating and Drinking in Nicaragua

Gallo pinto, the national dish of Nicaragua, is amazing.  The name translates to “speckled rooster” but I think it’s actually a vegetarian dish, or at least doesn’t have anything to do with roosters.  As far as we could tell it’s rice and black beans, sometimes with a wedge of crumbly cheese on the side, and mixed in are little crunchy bits of something or other that keep the dish from being mush and instead transform it into one that’s a lot more interesting than simply rice and beans.  It was delicious and I ate it as or with almost every meal.

Tona is the national beer, and it is equally delicious.  You can buy it everywhere, and at most places we went to it was less than a dollar a bottle.  Refreshing, crisp, and not too beer-y, perfect for quenching thirst on a hot Nicaraguan day.  We drank a lot of Tona.

When I wasn’t drinking Tona or guzzling water to stay hydrated, I was craving an ice cold Coca-Cola.  I never drink sodas and I usually find Coke too sweet and cloying, but something about being in Nicaragua made me into a Coke drinker.  They served it in tiny 8oz glass bottles, which have been used over and over again so many times they are scratched and dull, with faded red paint on the front in the vague shape of the Coca-Cola design.  If you ordered one in a restaurant they’d pop the top for you and then tie a paper napkin around the lip before bringing it out to you so that it looked like the bottle was wearing a little white necktie.  I found this endlessly charming.

People walk around selling plastic bags of juice or sugary water.  We saw these everywhere, little ziploc bags of brightly colored liquid dangling from people’s hands as they moseyed along, or discarded on the ground like deflated jellyfish with straws sticking out of them.  Granada was pretty clean for a developing nation, but plastic bags, sometimes with little bits of colored water still in them, were everywhere.  

The apartment we rented was attached to a cafe and included breakfast every morning, and we were up with the sun and at the gates to the restaurant when they opened at 7am.  The food was incredible, and in our eight mornings there we tried everything on the menu.  The coffee was phenomenal, but it was the fruit that I salivated over.  It was like eating fruit in its most pure, elemental form.  The pineapple, which was so pale yellow it was almost white, was the most flavorful I’ve ever had.  The bananas, which were way yellower than the ones I buy at Trader Joe’s, tasted like bananas on steroids.  Even the papaya, which I’m usually not crazy about, was so vibrant it looked like someone had dipped it in in orange paint.

On our second day in Granada we ventured east into the more run-down part of the city, and poked around some old churches.  Nearly blind with hunger, we stumbled across a small brunch place with an hour to spare before they closed, and ordered a traditional Nicaraguan breakfast.  When my plate came out, on it was a sunny-side-up egg with the most vibrant, orangest yolk I had ever seen.  The flavor was rich, complex, and almost earthy.  It was like eating sunshine.