Costa Rican cooking does not set out to surprise. It is food built on a base of rice and beans, fresh vegetables, very little heat and a great deal of fruit. Done properly and eaten in the right place, it is among the best value in Central America.
Gallo pinto and casado
Gallo pinto is the national breakfast: rice and black beans fried together with onion, sweet pepper and coriander, served with egg, fried ripe plantain, sour cream and a tortilla. It is seasoned with Salsa Lizano, a mild, faintly sweet condiment found on every table in the country and which many visitors end up taking home.
The casado is the standard lunch: a single plate with rice, beans, cabbage salad, ripe plantain, sometimes picadillo, and a protein of your choosing — chicken, fish, pork or beef. The name means 'married man', because local humour says it is what a married man would be given at home.
The rest
Olla de carne is a beef stew with cassava, yam, chayote, plantain and corn, traditionally eaten on Sundays. Chifrijo — beans, pork crackling, rice, pico de gallo and tortillas — started as a bar dish and is now an institution. Tico ceviche is usually made with sea bass, culantro and plenty of onion, and served with salted crackers.
From the Caribbean coast come coconut-milk rice and beans and rondón, which have nothing to do with central valley cooking. For dessert, tres leches, rice pudding and cajetas.
Sodas
The key word is soda: a small family-run place, a short handwritten menu, and a casado of the day at roughly a third of the price of a tourist-facing restaurant. It is where local people eat and where the food is best. Finding the village soda instead of the place with an English menu on the main street is the single best food tip for Costa Rica.
Drinks and coffee
Batidos — fresh fruit blended with water or milk — are everywhere: blackberry, passion fruit, cas, soursop, papaya. Local aguas frescas such as agua de sapo, with ginger and raw cane sugar, are worth trying.
Then there is coffee. Costa Rica grows only high-altitude arabica by law, and the estates of Tarrazú, Naranjo and the Orosi valley run tours explaining the process from cherry to cup. The traditional method is the chorreador, a cloth filter on a wooden stand.