Puerto Rico’s turning out Carib’s best

"San Juan is usually my base to catch puddle jumpers to more exotic locales. I was always more familiar with the San Juan airport’s connection gates than its food scene,” reports John Henderson for The Denver Post.

“But on a Caribbean stint last month, I learned something about food in San Juan. It has the best in the Caribbean. You can look it up. My “Rough Guide to the Caribbean” reads, “San Juan is garnering a reputation as the culinary capital of the Caribbean.” Frommer’s writes, “San Juan has the widest array of restaurants in the Caribbean.”
It has received major international play from former world boxing champion Tito Trinidad and singer Ricky Martin, two native sons who have traveled with their own Puerto Rican chefs and touted the cuisine as the best in the world,” reports Henderson.

“Who knew?”

Henderson continues, “But San Juan is carving out a name in a region that offers competition as stiff as the rum I had on this trip. (I woke up on my last day with an eye patch and a parrot.) There’s the jerk cuisine of Jamaica, the curried seafood of Tobago, the grilled flying-fish sandwiches in St. Kitts and Nevis and, of course, the Fish Friday of my beloved St. Lucia.”

“It can all be found in Old San Juan. Think New Orleans’ French Quarter with a samba beat. Its narrow, brick streets lined with small, pastel buildings of pink, aqua, yellow and orange, all adorned with elaborately ordained wrought-iron balconies and flowerpots. Only the iron-barred gates on the closed storefronts indicate the atmosphere here isn’t always Spanish love songs.”

“I walked past old men playing dominoes in a dimly lit plaza and a church where parishioners sang hymns before I found El Jibarito. The woman at my hotel called it ‘the best local food in all of Puerto Rico.’”

Full article here.

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