$6 to $80: Eating in Panama City is what you make of it

Writing from the Road: Panama

• Arrival in Panama City and Taxi to the Hostel
• $6 to $80: Eating in Panama City is what you make of it
• Photoblog: Writing in the rain is as tough as you might imagine

Finding food in Panama City is not a problem. Like any good international urban port, you can find just about any type of food from cafeteria style plastic tray point-and-serve, to  typical Panamanian fare (fried anything) to high end cuisine from India, the U,S,, France, Italy, Peru and anywhere else you can think of.

We love food, so in our four nights in Panama City we hit a few restaurants. Below are y impressions of each and the approximate cost for a meal for two.

• New York Bagel Café
  $12 for 2 coffees, omelet and lox and bagel sandwich.
  New York Bagel Café is located near a giant statue of Einstein’s head. Yes, Albert Einstein. The statue is prominently displayed in a small triangular park across the street from the café at LOCATION. We walked from our hostel to the café. By the time we arrived I was drenched in sweat and blissfully happy to discover that the café provided air conditioning. The space itself is a cavernous hanger-like box. There are aluminum tables and chairs in the back, and several comfy-looking couches arranged within convenient conversational distance. The cafe serves a lot of recognizable favorites such as omelets, scrambles, and bagels. Many of the items are in English, though the person who took my order did not speak English. His manager did, though and he was very helpful in clearing up a misunderstanding or two. Apparently ojos does not mean “eggs.” There is wifi.
• Niko’s Cafe
  $6 for 2 plates of 3-4 items each.
  This was my first introduction to what I would soon learn is a beloved Panamanian institution: the cafeteria style restaurant. Score! Not only did it have ice-cold air conditioning, for a traveler on a budget you cannot do much better than these prices. Open at several locations around town, we ate at the one at LOCATION. The food is cheap, plentiful and edible. You grab an orange tray, start at one end and point to what you want. The lunch lady serves you up a big spoon of it and you move along the line. The stewed chicken (pollo guisado), white rice and plantains were good. They had mango juice. Did I mention the air conditioning? Recommended.
• Loving Hut
  $15-$18 for two meals and two weird avocado shakes
  We passed this place on LOCATION while looking for a farmacia. We decided we had to try it because we’ve been in a couple others in California. One in San Diego and one in Palo Alto. Also, we knew the food pretty well (or, thought we did – turned out we were wrong) and we knew that the place was no only vegetarian, which is very hard to find in Panama City, but VEGAN.
  OK, truth be told, the biggest reason we wanted to go n is because we are fascinated by Supreme Master Television and its eponymous founder Supreme Master Ching Hai. As close as I can figure, this is the parent company of Loving Hut and you can read more about it here and here.  The staff was very nice, and the food was fine. We were expecting a more California-style vegan menu with offerings of carefully crafted treats made to be as decadent as their animal-fat infused counterparts. However, the food was basically Chinese stir fry mixtures of veggies. Fine, but not great. We ordered a pair of avocado shakes out of pure curiosity. They were extremely rich and overpoweringly avocado-y. To try to get more of that milkshake decadence and fruit flavor our of them, we added sugar. This helped make them slightly more palatable. Our server told us that she recommended that the owner add sugar, but he said if customers want it sweeter than they can add it themselves. Either way works, but we couldn’t really finish them anyway..Even if the food wasn’t amazing you can’t beat the message: Go veg. Be green.
• Machu Picchu
  $55 for two entrees, two appetizers, four pisco sours and a slice of chocolate cake,
  This place came highly recommended by both travel books we brought with us. They serve Peruvian cuisine. The chef owns two restaurants, one in Panama City and the other in Boquete. We have since been to both. I have been nauseous after each visit. Jonah has not. He rather likes them. For our meal in Panama City we both ordered cold ceviche as the appetizer. The fish was velvety and tart. Delicious. The pisco sours we ordered complemented the ceviche marinade quite well. The drinks were strong and our heads were swimming by the time the entrees arrived. Jonah had the squid and rice cooked in its own ink. I had more fish with rice and coleslaw. There was plenty of food, but I felt it was overly salted.  We ordered the cake for desert because we confused our restaurants and thought it was the warm chocolate cake made with organic chocolate from Bocas Del Toro. It wasn’t. It tasted a bit like Hershey’s syrup over a slab of cafeteria cake. See below for the La Posta review for the cake.
• La Posta
  $80 for an appetizer, two entrees, a glass of wine, two mojitos and two slices of chocolate cake
  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED – OK, I’m writing this nearly a month after eating at this restaurant. To be honest, I don’t really remember what we ordered. However, I do remember that the mojitos were refreshing and filled with fresh mint muddled with local rum and simple syrup. The wine was delightful and the food, whatever it was, was delicious. Yes, it was expensive, but if it’s in your budget I highly recommend this place. The stand-out for me was desert. Warm chocolate cake made with organic chocolate from the Bocas del Toro region of Panama. So good: not too sweet with a prefect crumb.