Let me begin relating my recent Costa Rica vacation experience by saying that, generally speaking, the people of Costa Rica are a friendly and welcoming bunch.
If you are in the business of sweeping generalizations from such a rapid and short 10 day vacation experience, one is tempted to draw parallels between their roads outside of San Jose and their general food and cooking skills.
I would say from my experience that the roads and food situation in Costa Rica are in the same ballpark from a perception and experience point of view.
Now if you are into fruit and veg, you are gonna love the place if that is your diet three times a day, every day! The avocado, papaya, pineapple and mango situation is outstanding!
After spending 10 days across three different cities and regions, I found the prepared food I experienced there to be a rather huge disappointment, aside from the typical rice and beans that the locals appear to quaff in copious quantities, that is.
They indeed have a blue zone region in Costa Rica, but it's intriguing to observe that the dietary habits of this region heavily revolve around a fishy and fruity diet.
I came to the conclusion their culinary woes stem from their clean air sustainable bent as the flames and heat from their heat sources for cooking do not have what it takes to get the job done right, IMHO.
In any event, due to their bizarre habit of mixing a single ingredient into all of their food in copious quantities, I doubt they could ever discern "good" from "bad" food anyways.
Literally everything we ordered there came swamped in Cilantro.
Chicken quesadillas as drowning in it, tortillas are drowning in it, ceviches of many kinds are all drowning in it.
Order a steak and you get a semi sous vide concoction with the general flavor of ultra-bland rubber and looking pretty grey without the softness sous vide usually brings with it.
I ordered a T-Bone one night and got what looked like a gorgeously barbecued piece of meat but it was totally raw under the 1mm toasted exterior when I tried to cut through it.
It also tasted the way Bay leaves rolled in dog poop smell!
All the steaks I ordered were badly butchered by the amateurs "cooking" them, prompting me to offer cooking classes pro bono on a propper grill with a suitable flame at all the hotels I stayed in.
Likewise, the cooked fish clearly did not have enough heat exposure to live up to the quest to actually be cooked properly and have some pleasant flavors baked in to the equation as well.
They did do chocolate flavored desserts right though........
I was thus enormously thankful to find myself back in the USA after said 10 days of culinary level swill exposure.
On my return to the USA I lost no time getting reacquainted with my Kamado Joe BBQ devices and had me some real good BBQ pronto maximus!
I spent a whole 40 minutes hugging them both when I got home Tuesday morning at 1 AM....My neighbor looked across the fence and shook his head but he has not experienced the dire fare that passed my lips these past 10 days!!
I did redress with my style of Kamado Joe Pura Vida and the world is now back as one from my vantage point at any rate!
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