Eating. Pretty much one of the best parts of thus traveling is the food. Yum. Walking down the streets, you’ll pass dozens and dozens of little bodega restaurants. There might be 10 chairs. There might be a little kids running around, sometimes even a random animal inside as well. It’s never the cleanest looking place, and maybe or may not have been a garage at one point. You look at the messily written menu on the chalkboard out front, and if you stare for more than 10 seconds, you’ll be accosted by a server, cook, or owner, trying to get you to come in. Some times, it’s some random dude in the street that may or may not be affiliated with the restaurant, but he’s damn out there trying to sell the shit out of the place. He’ll read you the whole menu, complete with little kissing noises after each item. More often than not, the server, cook, and owner are all the same person. They’ll read you the menu, tell you its they best in town, and even start haggling the price down before you’ve even agreed to sit down.  You can definitely taste the love and effort put into it. That seems to be a theme here..it’s all about the hustle.  Having worked in the industry for a long damn time, it just seems so, so different. I’ve watched servers roll their eyes when people walk in the door, like they’ve got something better to do than work while at work. Cooks cussing when a ticket rolls in. I’m guilty of all those things myself.  Not that we don’t work our asses off at our jobs in American restaurants (most of the time), but we definitely have a sense of entitlement when it comes to our jobs. But here, its seems like they’re literally trying to get every mofo that walks by to come. Even at the bigger, nice restaurants, the staff is out on the street working it. Maybe I’m just spoiled or jaded with the business at this point, but it’s nice to be wanted.  Anyways, about the actual food….

You order a juice. They go cut it up and juice that bad boy for you. You aren’t getting anything quickly here. It’s not gonna be cold, either.  But it will be the freshest damn juice you’ll ever taste. Everytime.

They love their potatoes here. There’s some sort of potato with everything. Sweet potatoes are the best. There’s lots of yucca fries. At Bembo’s, a national fast food place, there’s fries and egg on my burger already. How did they know?  It just seems there potato on sandwiches by default.  However, the ketchup is kinda weird. It’s definitely…sweet. And a little darker in color. It’s not bad, but you do think about it after every bite.

Ceviche…I’m used to my ceviche cut up a little fine. Nice, neat little pieces. So we go to this restaurant, I get a ceviche entree, and they bring me at least a couple pounds of seafood. Not little neatly cut pieces. Big hunks of seafood.  There’s a slice of boiled sweet potato, and some corn with giant ass kernels.  I don’t even know what to do with it at first.  I’ve never eaten so much not conventionally cooked seafood in my life. But it’s damn delicious…again, keyword is fresh.

Anyways, I’m talking too much. This is only part one, after all. Still on the list is guinea pig and alpaca steaks.  There’s a few pictures for your enjoyment, although it won’t be as much as my enjoyment. I feel there should be more pictures, because we’ve definitely eaten a lot more than this. Maybe we accidentally ate them, too. Don’t worry. More to come, so stay hungry, my friends.