Tierra Firme is iconic. Though Panama City’s international terminal has added the culinary diversity of a Subway and Dunkin Donuts in the past couple of years, Tierra Firme is still the lone sit down eatery. Everyone to have passed through the international lounge of Tocumen knows it. For some reason layovers here are almost always long.
I was walking back to my hotel from La Chonta restaurant in Pucallpa, Peru recently and noticed a glowing shrine in the back lot of a building. I stepped into the lot to take a closer look. It almost looked like a Voodoo or Santeria shrine. There was a venerated image with a heading La Diosa del Amor, the Goddess of Love. Candles were all around it and small offerings sat with them. A man came out from the backdoor of the building and saw me peering at the shrine.
Amazonian markets tend to be either great or terrible. Some rely heavily on local produce and gather fruits and vegetables from the surrounding rivers, while others seem to be just drop off points for processed and packaged food. Pucallpa’s Mercado Numero 2, just a few blocks from the Plaza de Armas, is great.
Living in Peru has a translation of an article from Lima, Peru’s El Comercio newspaper about Johnny Schuler, the founding member and president of the National Tasters Guild of Peru and a member of the Peruvian Academy of Pisco, who is part of a big pisco project in Ica that is being targeted at… Read More →
Cookbook Author, Tour Leader, and Foodie Liz Caskey is a resident of Santiago, Chile, which felt the effects of the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that occurred this past Saturday February 27th. At the time of writing, more than 700 people have been reported killed in the quake and aftershocks have continued to frighten residents. The epicenter of the quake happened off the coast of Maule, not far from the city of Concepción, which has seen the most damage. Media reports in the United States keep referring to the devastation in Southern Chile (in my opinion Southern Chile starts south of Temuco) and give the impression of a total collapse of infrastructure. Here Caskey answers a few questions about what is actually going on:
I first heard about groups of armed gunmen robbing the luxury resort hotels in Argentine Wine Country in late 2008, when the raids seemed to be at their peak. I soon learned that the robberies in Mendoza had been going on since 2006 and recently discovered that they have continued as recently as this January.
El Comercio Peru reports (El restaurante Central volverá a abrir sus puertas este lunes | El Comercio Perú) that the restaurant Central in Lima, Peru will reopen its doors March 1st with brilliant chef Virgillo Martinez remaining at the helm. The restaurant (which I reviewed here) was one of the… Read More →
Just the other day I saw an advertisement for açaí (pronounced ah-sigh-EE) vodka, so it came with great pleasure to read Seth Kugel’s write up of the fastly expanding açaí industry in the Brazilian state of Para (Açaí, a Global Super Fruit, Is Dinner in the Amazon – NYTimes.com). Kugel… Read More →
Even though train service to Machu Picchu has been interrupted for at least the next six weeks or so (FYI: a bus/train connection via Santa Teresa is supposedly in the works until it is repaired) and the Inca Trail is closed for it’s annual maintenance in February, there are still plenty of alternatives to spend your time in Peru. There’s much more to Peru than Machu Picchu. Sure, it’s a world wonder and a UNESCO world heritage site, but there’s 11 other world heritage sites in Peru too.
Paloma Vergara of El Comercio Peru (and the excellent new blog Papas y Camotes) did a short interview and video with me exploring El Mercado de Surquillo Numero 1 in Lima, Peru. My apologies in advance for my Spanish!