The Panamanian Award Goes to...
In which I dine at the four Panama City restaurants on the 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America list.
Let’s start with some caveats. Isn’t that the best way to start a post you want people to read?
This is going to be my first “paid subscribers only” post. At some point, it’s time to get paid for what I do. I will be writing up a short and sweet piece on overall dining in Panama City for the week over on SaltShaker, and copy it to here, but it won’t include these.
I don’t care that much about award lists. Not really. Not in terms of the awards themselves. I’ve had some thoughts on award lists in the past. What I do care about is that they often point me towards somewhere to dine that I will enjoy, and sometimes might not have heard about otherwise. However, I’ve found, dependent on the award in question, they may equally point me towards an experience I never want to repeat.
The selection of these four restaurants is from the most recent Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list, from November 2023.
I have winged (wung?) my way to Panama City enroute to spending some time with friends and family in the US. Taking advantage of Copa Airlines stay-over plan, Panama City being their base, they allow you to take a break for, I think, up to a week, there, without adding anything to the cost of your flight to your final destination.
The city is a mix of new and old. I’m staying in what, I think, more or less counts as the city center, in the first hotel ever built in Panama, the aptly named El Panamá.
But I also spend a fair amount of time in the “old city”, the Casco Histórico. Here are a lot of the more interesting museums. And, of course, there’s the famed canal, which for the first few days I’m there is closed to tourism because of an oil spill, and when I do visit it it’s rainy and there are no ships passing through in the next few hours. Not that the Panama Canal was on my bucket list, but it might have been fun to watch the process. Then again, I’ve both watched and ridden through the Erie Canal - does that count?
Let’s get on to these four restaurants. I’ll do a separate writeup of touring around and other food experiences in the next days.
I’m going to do these in order from the list, rather than the order I tried them in. Intimo, Calle 72 Este, is in the San Francisco section of the city, just to the northeast of the city center. The restaurant is located in what seems to be a residential area, with a few small commercial and light industry businesses scattered about. There’s a small lighted sign hanging from an awning over the street, but the entrance is not at the sign, it’s at the other end of the covered area, through a door marked with a small silver plaque. Inside, a long bar fronts onto the kitchen, and there are a few scattered tables as well, though at least the night I was there, everyone (a whole seven other people) sat at the bar.
A comment on service, not particular to this spot, but something I found at, I think, every restaurant but one that I ate at. The process seemed to go as follows: Greet the customer as they come in and show them to the table. A waiter brings a cocktail list, greets you, and walks away. Not the menu, not the wine list. A few minutes go by and someone will return to ask if you’ve decided on a cocktail. Not ordering one will engender surprise on the part of your waiter. As will a request to see the menu and/or wine list, without having partaken of a cocktail. Look at the list, please, we have wonderful cocktails. The menu and wine list will be brought, and left, wordlessly. A few minutes will go by, then a few more, and at some point you will have to signal to someone who will come, pad at the ready, to take your order. If you have questions about menu items they will be answered cheerfully, but the person will likely then walk away without taking your order, and you will have to signal again when you are ready to place one. This may well be the last time you see your waiter until it is time for the bill. Others will bring food from the kitchen, and may or may not interact with you with anything more than the name of the dish as it is place on your table. Your plates will be cleared by yet someone else, within nanoseconds of you taking the last bite from them. You want to sop up some sauce with bread (which you will likely have to order, and pay for)? Guard your plate from hovering hands. When you’re ready for your check, signal for it, it will be instantly at the table, with a credit card machine at the ready, and a request to know how much you want to add as a tip. 10% is fine, more for great service. It is unlikely anyone will speak to you on your way out.
Back to Intimo, which came in at #86 on last year’s list. The chef-owner describes the restaurant as a “gastro-cultural experience”, a phrase which makes my tummy rumble, and not in a good way. Originally, I gather, a tasting menu only sort of place, it now boasts a short but interesting menu, and an excellent selection of wines by both bottle and glass. In fact, wine seems to be a big part of it, and three of the aforementioned seven people weren’t even eating, they were just buying and sharing bottles of wine. The kitchen seems to have more people than it needs working there - the two in the picture above, who mostly stood around chatting quietly in the corner, two others who seemed to do all the work, and one person delivering the food and clearing plates.
I started off from the short list of hot appetizers entitled “Our Evolution” with clams in a brown butter, ginger, and roasted corn sauce. A generous portion, the clams a trifle overcooked, making some of them a bit chiclet-y. The sauce, delicious, more corn and butter than ginger. The focaccia on the side, excellent.
Less successful, four whopping salt-grilled prawns from their main course menu, “From the Sea and Land”, served up with lemon butter. These were so overcooked the meat could have been used to erase ballpoint pen marks. The flavors were fine - I mean… salt, butter, lemon… what’s not to like? But I had trouble even biting in to some of these. And, a cardinal sin with shrimp and prawns, two of them hadn’t had their “poop chutes” completely removed.
A glass of an excellent white wine, Azores Wine Company’s Arinto dos Açores 2019 from Portugal - “Hardcore minerally wine. A blast of slightly funky earthiness on the nose. Medium body, high acidity, earth forward, and a lingering finish. Minerals, raw hazelnut, parrafin, and underripe pineapple on the palate.” The sommelier - bartender let me know it was the last glass of this wine in her last bottle, as she poured it. There was maybe an inch left in the bottle, not enough for another glass, as she went to store it. Catching my musing glance, she quickly offered that she was just keeping it cold and would top off my glass later. Indeed.
With tip, $67. I was happy with wine and clams, not so happy with the rest. Still, I might go back - the menu is at least intriguing, and the wine list beckons.
Coming in on the list at #51 is Fonda Lo Que Hay, in the Edificio Colegio on Calle Obaldía in the Casco Histórico, this one got pre-visit thumbs up from the list as well as one of my trusted correspondents, but a thumbs down from another, who opined it wasn’t that good and was very touristy. I will grant the latter part - I don’t think there was anyone in there who wasn’t a tourist, other than one businessman who was entertaining some other visiting business folk. But in contrast to my service assessment above, this was the only restaurant I went to that went out of their way to pay attention to customers, offer advice, answer questions and be at the ready if it looked like someone needed something. Perhaps it’s an adaptation to tourist expectations, but then again - all four of the restaurants I’m covering today had pretty heavily visitor-slanted clientele. Oh, this is also the only one of the four that offered tap water as an option to pricier bottled, and the tap water in Panama City is perfectly fine to drink.
A fonda, by the way, is “a category of dining establishment inferior to that found in a hotel, serving up popular dishes”, more or less. They’re often more or less what we’d think of as diners, or in Argentina, bodegones. “Lo Que Hay” translates to something like “it is what it is” - a sort of resigned acceptance of where you find yourself. This place is obviously an upscale riff on the idea.
I have found myself in a bit of a clam mood on this trip, there will be more. Here, they’re offered up as Almejas sexies, or Sexy clams. The menu says clams with squash, ajillo sauce (garlic and smoked paprika), chili crunch, and cashews. I didn’t encounter any squash on the plate, but sautéed bok choy stems and leaves abounded. Sexy? I don’t know about that, but damned good, perfectly cooked, and wow level delicious.
Not that I wouldn’t have come anyway, it being on the list, but one much touted dish had been rattling about in my brain. Their reinterpretation of penne al cacio e pepe, the classic cheese and pepper emulsion pasta of Rome. Here, buried under the al dente quills of pasta were cubes of smoked veal tongue, while the top was garnished with fried nubs of banana, and crispy wonton noodles. My waiter warned me that the pepper might be a bit much, he found it too intense. I found myself wanting to go back into the kitchen to show them how much pepper the dish really should have - which involved asking my waiter for some more, being brought about a teaspoonful of freshly cracked pepper, and dumping all of it, to his horror, into the pasta and mixing it up. I love the addition of the smoked tongue and the textural contrast of the crunchy noodles. I’m not sold on the fried banana.
Overall, a really good experience, and the above, plus a cocktail - yes, I drank a cocktail, called erase una vez (once upon a time) of mezcal, cucumber cordial, pineapple, and a chili flake rimmed glass - and tip, came in at $60. This time, no regrets.
On to #25 on the list, Cantina del Tigre, Calle 68 Este (“at the end, in front of the black house”), back in the San Francisco neighborhood. This is a relatively new venture from a chef who broke into the local dining scene through a burger food truck that apparently used to have lines around the block. Entered through an unmarked door, you have a short walk…
…and upon passing through the portal at the end…
…you find yourself in a jungle themed bar and casual dining area. Service reverts to my earlier description.
Okay, they didn’t have clams or I might have ordered them for comparison. I started off with a tartare of kampachi, or amberjack (pez limón in most of the Spanish speaking world) with roma tomatoes and basil. Quite good, and worth scooping up with the plantain chips for the added crunch.
An interesting twist on a tamál, using rice instead of corn for the filling, and glazed over with a papaya puree, some coconut, and seasoned with papaya seeds (which add a peppery bite). And apparently roasted rather than steamed until the leaf covering is charred, adding a lovely smoky flavor to the whole thing. I’m not 100% sold on the texture of a rice tamál versus cornmeal, but taste-wise, it was fantastic.
And, finished off with a bar snack of fried prawn heads, crispy and delicious, and on their own a scooping vessel for the “fish dip”, which, think whitefish salad at a great bagel shop, making the additional bowl of plantain chips unnecessary.
All around great food, okay service, nice ambiance if you don’t mind a bit of jungle theming. And the three plates above, plus bottled water, a local beer, and tip, a bit pricier at $76 - more or less due to the additional bar snack.
Maito, Calle 50 in the ritzier far northeast Coco del Mar section of the city, comes in at number 6 in all of Latin America. I’m going to get the one negative, and it was a big one for me, out of the way. At the exact moment I arrived, so did a tour bus filled with about forty people. So when I ordered a series of small plates, more or less a self-designed tasting menu, the kitchen apparently decided to swamp my table with all of them at once, in order to be able to pay attention to the order from the big group. I was not the only one subjected to this. Here’s the thing, if you’ve accepted a huge group like that, don’t take other reservations at the same time. I guarantee none of those people will ever be more than one time customers, and you may well lose repeat customers who were treated this way. If the food weren’t so good, I’d probably never consider returning in the future, just on that basis.
Another kampachi tartare, or really, the first one, since I went to Maito before any of the others. Nice and spicy - the theme here is “afro-panamanian” food, and African and Middle Eastern spices make their way into all the dishes. Scooped on to patacones, fried smashed plantain chips, it was a beautiful start.
The bread of the house (and the only place I went all week that served free bread), choux puffs with a spicy paprika gel of sorts. Yummy.
Then again, maybe the bread thing is because so many of the dishes come with accompanying starchy things, be they focaccias, or great Italian bread like this, or plantain chips of one sort or another? Here, a tomato salad served in a smoked melon broth that tasted like it was spiked with harissa - fiery and very caraway-y. Interesting, my waiter had described the dish as being a “variety of cherry tomatoes”, while this was clearly just peeled, seeded, and diced plum tomatoes. Still one hell of a good tomato salad.
Shrimp wontons in… well… my memory on this one escapes me. I remember something about chili oils and herb oils, but can’t recall what the yellow sauce was - a fruit tinged corn sauce perhaps? While good, this was my least favorite course - I thought it a bit bland.
And, my favorite course of the meal. If I followed the waiter’s description right, these are shortribs that are marinated in chilies and sugarcane juice for something like a week and then slow smoked for sixteen hours. Melt in the mouth tender, amazing flavors from the smoked sugarcane that impregnates the meat, as well as the kick from the chilies. Give me this and the tomato salad and I’m a happy camper.
Not overly successful the recommended glass of Riesling 2022, the Y Series from Yalumba in Australia. Then again, my waiter wasn’t a sommelier, and one didn’t seem to be available, and it was one of only two choices on the white side, the other being an Argentine chardonnay - “Slightly jarring acidity, fruit froward with underripe apricot, honeysuckle, and green leaves. Light body, dry. Fairly short finish. I found it too acidic to pair well with the spicier dishes at this restaurant, exaggerating those elements rather than complementing them.”
Service was the way I noted up at the beginning of this post, but marred by the piling of plates on the table. All told, all of the above, plus bottled water and tip, $86. In truth, while the most expensive of the four, it was the best bargain, given that it involved four plates of food.
Final thoughts? All four places were interesting, in a good way. Three of them I’d easily recommend to go to. I’m on the fence about Intimo - one good dish, one not good dish, but nothing exciting, other than the best wine of the week.