Las Sodas

Our favorite places to eat are the sodas. These small, open-air roadside cafes, usually located on the patio of a residence or shop, are run by Ticos or Ticas who can cook up a home-style storm. There are usually four or five tables for patrons. The food is authentic and oh, so delicious. Full meals typically cost $2-4 each, including beverage. For breakfast (desayuno) regardless of what one orders – whether eggs, accompanying meat, or cereals – a plate of gallo pinto accompanies the order. This dish of mildly flavored black beans mixed with rice is considered the national staple. I cannot imagine eating bland hash browns or toast again with my eggs. Eggs are bright orange in color, fresh from the chicken, and this fowl itself is mighty tasty. Breast meat is rich and juicy and compares in color to dark meat of mass-produced chickens in the U.S., and the dark meat is even more dark and flavorful.

We try the casado at each place. Literally meaning ‘married’, this dish is the standard fixed plate of each soda. Heaps of gallo pinto are surrounded with fried plantains, pickled cabbage, greens/tomato salad, spicy red beans and any of the following choices: sautéed or fried chicken, shredded beef or beef steak, pork on bones, fish filets or entire fish, plus tortillas. We eat slowly, usually visiting with the owner/cook and other patrons, and enjoy strong café with crema or black (negra).

The bathrooms at these roadside places are very primitive but clean. The toilet is in a room to itself; sometimes walls are open near the ceiling. The sinks are most often on an outside wall and shared by both bathrooms. There is soap but no towels. Even though we must dry our hands on our clothes, this seems more sanitary than having the sink near the toilet and then touching a potentially bacteria-laden door handle.

Pecos has become friendly with a barrel-bellied man who wears a white apron at his little soda and market stand at the base of our mountain. This proprietor stands at the ready over huge kettles of broth which hold the most delectable, often unrecognizable hunks of meat. He smiles as he sees Pecos coming and with long tongs fishes out a piece for us to taste. He recognizes a true fellow carnivore when he sees one. Putting the meat on a cutting board he hacks off a slice with his machete and hands it to us on a toothpick. Yes, we’ll have it, whatever it is, and please, senor, accompany with the yucca or plantains that you have simmering next to your kettles over there. Pecos is in heaven. Sometimes we stop and for a thousand colones ($2) purchase a plate to take with us – enough to share for dinner and leftovers to flavor our own pinto gallo that we make at home.

We also enjoy eating at this place. We sit at an old wooden table with a colorful tablecloth. Squashes, gourds and fruits hang overhead. Palm fronds shade us. Like the other sodas, this one too has a canning jar of assorted pickled vegetables sitting on the table for patrons’ use. Some of the other customers are given plates of food and a toothpick for dining, but without asking we are given a fork and knife with our meals. I ask the proprietor’s wife for an extra fork so that I can pull out some pickled cauliflower and onions from the jar. She smiles, si, si, and takes a used fork from another table, quickly rinses it under water at the sink (presumably cold water), wipes it with a clean cloth and brings it to me with a smile. I assume that since we’ve eaten at several sodas that by now we must have built up resistance to at least some germs. I think of my friendly health inspector for the inn back in Oregon and wonder what he would think of this type of open air, most hospitable, yet casual dining experience. I fear that he knows too much and would not survive. 