Bocas del Toro, Panama

I can’t get scooped on Bocas del Toro, Panama--one of my favorite places on the planet. So I’ve been inspired by JSM to get this post up…finally. This report is a follow-up from the one on Panama City.

As mentioned before, this was our third trip back to Panama, and Bocas is where we fell in love with the country. A little background: Although the province of Bocas del Toro wasn’t officially created until 1903 (after the Thousand Days War with Columbia), the area, as JSM noted, was a major hub in the banana industry, beginning in the 1880s when the Snyder Banana Company moved in, and later the United Fruit Company. For a time, the area was flush with banana money (and sugar cane, cocoa and coconut), but the appearance of a pest or type of fungus (maybe fusarium wilt a.k.a. Panama disease?) around 1914 wiped out the banana business by the 1930s, and Bocas went bust.

Today, the area is experiencing a tourism/real estate boom. I could go into more detail about the changes we’ve seen over the few years we’ve been going—both good and bad—but I’m here to talk about food.

The archipelago of Bocas del Toro is comprised of six large islands (Colon, Popa, Bastimientos, Cristobal, Water Cay and Carenero Cay) and a few smaller ones (including the Zapatillas Islands, where the first U.S. “Survivor” series was filmed). Every year, we return to the same, gorgeous, incredibly remote eco-huts at Al Natural on Old Bastimentos, or “Old Bank” (so-called because Columbus used this area as a replenishing stopover point during his travels and trade). Al Natural is situated on Punta Vieja (Old Point), the southeastern tip of the island, and is about a 45-minute boat ride through mangroves and freakishly clear blue-green waters from Bocas “town”.

Did I mention remote? I’ll keep harping on that point, because it’s crucial to understand when you’re seeing pictures of the food. Which I’ll get to in a second.

Al Natural is an eco-resort, and as such, the place is run almost entirely on solar panels and collected/reclaimed rainwater. The dining/bar/kitchen hut, like all of the bungalows, is a hardwood, thatch-roofed structure that borrows its style from the old building traditions of the nearby Ngobe-Bugle Indian village. I point out this stuff not for educational purposes, but to set the stage for the scene where the meals you’re about to see were prepared. We’re talking jungle, people. Gilligan’s Island, but with a tetch of Chez Panisse.

The place is run by a motley trio of Belgians who are as much a part of the charm and appeal of this spot as the natural surroundings. The Chef, one Vincent Lavalle, was an award-winning affineur (among other things) in Belgium. He produced fromage de Herve, an unpasteurized cow’s milk cheese named for the town of its origin. I’ve never had the pleasure of tasting this cheese, but Chef described it as “vehry vehry steenkee”—a pungent, Limburger-style.

The Chef, Vincent Lavalle


On Lavalle’s nights off, which he spends with his lovely wife, the proprietor of an excellent Indian restaurant in Bocas called Om Café, the stand-in chef is a peach of a French woman named Natalie.

Chef Natalie


Every night, depending on what’s fresh in town or what fish shows up on the dock via cayuco from the local fisherman, Lavalle turns out a meal that would be impressive coming out of a fully-equipped, high-tech restaurant kitchen. Of course, some credit goes to the big, 24/7 fish market just a few steps away and the fact that lots of ingredients come from Al Natural’s “back yard”, a dense, swampy jungle wilderness filled with coconut and papaya trees.

Pumpkin Coconut Soup


One of my favorite dishes served, which this picture doesn’t do justice to, is tuna carpaccio—paper-thin slices of tuna, onion and pepper in a citrus-y vinaigrette.

Tuna Carpaccio


This one is a close second favorite; the little orange pod on top of the rice is an edible flower. We were told it was a ginger sprout, but that didn’t quite seem right. It had a tangy, citrus flavor.

Skewers of shrimp and scallop with bacon in a rosemary cream sauce


Chicken curry


Jackfish in wasabi-curry sauce


Scallops with pea stoemp


Dessert was typically fresh fruit, like pineapple or banana, sprinkled with coconut, lavender or chocolate, and slathered in a rum sauce.

Pineapple in rum sauce


Bananas with rum/brown sugar sauce


We’ve only spent a few nights total in Bocas town, so our experience at restaurants is limited. Favorites include:

Om Café: Authentic East Indian food
El Pecado: Great, inexpensive seafood and ceviche
The Pirate: Burgers

The Super Gourmet food store, which has quadrupled in size and selection since our first visit, is the place to get good Panamanian coffee beans (from nearby Boquete) and locally-made chocolate from the Caribbean Chocolate Company. This chocolate is unlike any I’ve ever had—a bit grainy, rich, sweet and crumbly. I brought back about ten bars of the chocolate the first trip, thinking I would give it away as gifts, but I’ve been very greedy about who is or isn’t chocolate-worthy. I’ve had this bar in my freezer since the previous trip, so it’s about a year old and not as rich and dark due to storage. It’s still in my freezer because it’s almost too good to eat.

Chocolate bar from Caribbean Chocolate Company


Bocas will always be our first love, but we’ve also had a chance to explore other parts of Panama. For food travelers, I highly recommend seeing the coffee fincas in and around Boquete, a mountain village set in a cloud forest on the eastern side of Volcan Baru (an inactive volcano). We also drove along the Pacific side of Panama, across the Pan-American Highway, from David to Pedasi. The drive had its share of thrills (including being shaken down by a cop for $50) and, best of all, roadside food.

Crispy pollo asado and some kind of thick, sweet-ish masa stuff


The Co-Eater (and driver) was not at all happy when I demanded that he stop at a roadside stand with chains of linked sausage draped, in the sun, from a pole out front. Clearly, he has no sense of adventure.

Sun-baked chorizo


Naturally, I bought a few links. My cohort was convinced that the chorizo would either kill me, or make me violently ill, which made it all the more fun to torture him by periodically taking nibbles from a link. This sausage was very vinegar-y, very spicy, and probably not the encased death-wish he assumed it was. However, about 10 miles down the road, we passed a family van parked on the side of the road. A small boy was projectile-hurling a bilious liquid into a ditch. We cracked up. I got a little freaked out. The window went down. The chorizo went out.

I also bought a bottle of what I thought was honey (because they told me it was “miel”), but it’s actually cane syrup. It was contained in an old, not exactly clean Seco bottle. (Seco is a sugar cane-based alcohol, and the national booze of Panama.) I managed to smuggle it home in my suitcase with no red flags from Customs. Once home, I boiled the syrup until it hit 185 degrees, just to be safe. It’s dark and smoky and delicious. I’ll be using it in my next batch of granola, and pecan pies.

This post is getting epic, so I’ll just post a few more pics and leave it at that.

Steak and mushrooms with patacones


Whole, fried corvina with yucca fries


Pulpo and corvina ceviche

Crrush

Looks like you and I were on the same tour, different buses. I was in Panama City and Bocas del Toro in late January early February and I have to say, Panama is one spectacular place !

Bocas del Toro :

Arriving from Panama City on a late afternoon flight I hiked the short distance from the airport into town. My nose led me directly to the finest grilled chicken I've had since last summer.


This is some excellent chicken , $2.00 gets you half a bird stuffed into a paper bag , Fifty cents at the near by liquor store gets you an ice cold beer to wash it down !

Bocas Town is an old United Fruit banana town thats gone turistic. Lots of folks from all over the planet are investing big money here....


...sometimes to no avail. Foodwise this town is pretty much a tropical version of Deadwood.

There was no room at the inn in Bocas but a ten minute water taxi ride away is the nice little town of Old Bank on Isla Bastimento.


View from my $15 suite.

Not a lot goes on in Old Bank and of the four restaurants in town the only one that was open on a consistent basis was the American run Red Rooster.


Chow at the Rooster varied as every night a different local woman would come in and run the kitchen. I was hoping for some decent seafood given the local. Other than a pair of smallish , overly deep fried redsnappers one night I found that burgers and fried chicken were the way to go here.
All in all a great little waterfront dive ! dinner, live entertainment ,plenty to drink and tips for the cook and guitar player came in well under $20.

JSM: Excellent!

There is a tendency in Panama to fry EVERYTHING. It's particularly disturbing when it happens to a gorgeous fish, like redfish or corvina, which we saw a lot of on the Pacific side. We tried to skip the fried offerings as much as possible, and since most places seemed to have ceviche in some form, it worked out.

Any plans to go back?

crrush wrote:We tried to skip the fried offerings as much as possible, and since most places seemed to have ceviche in some form, it worked out.

When I asked a Panama City cab driver where I could find some ceviche action I was whisked to the Mercado de Mariscos.


The market has a restaurant above it that will prepare your BYO fish but after gorging myself on the ceviche I could eat no more. This was probably the best ceviche of the entire trip.

crrush wrote:Any plans to go back?

In a heart beat, however after coming back from Panama I relieved my wife on the home front so she could go to Guatemala. I was there about 12 yrs ago and after seeing her pics I'm starting to think about a trip back there as well.

Very nice post. I'm sent a link to my SO to try and convince her to go. She thought a trip to Costa Rica was exotic. This is much more remote. I've also been looking at the Corn Islands off the coast of Nicaragua next winter.
Now I have things to daydream about for a winter vacation.

Your post sure takes me back. I visited Bocas del Toro in the summer of 1996 -- purely as a fluke. My friend and I were spending a week on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, when we got a little bored and decided to try to cross the Panamanian border. Somehow, we wound up in Bocas del Toro. My clearest recollection of the trip (nearly 11 years ago now!) was an all day boat tour that we took with one of the locals. It was just my friend and I in a small boat with the local guide. Around lunchtime, he took us back to some sort of man-made island (or maybe it was a bigger boat -- my memory is a little foggy) where he served us a lunch of fresh grilled fish and rice. Such simple meal, but a truly memorable one. The fish was delicious and the scenery was beautiful.

crrush wrote:I also bought a bottle of what I thought was honey (because they told me it was “miel”)

Miel de caña - I think that's how it is commonly known in S. America. (see the pic here)

However, about 10 miles down the road, we passed a family van parked on the side of the road. A small boy was projectile-hurling a bilious liquid into a ditch. We cracked up. I got a little freaked out. The window went down. The chorizo went out.

Just curious crrush, was the family van at the chorizo shop earlier? Also how tall was the boy (short enough so that he wouldn't be able to see out the window of the van easily) and was the road quite bumpy? In which case your chorizo was a victim to the kid's motion sickness. Though I sympathize.
Great post(s). Pity all that fresh fish gets mostly fried. I should dig up some fish market pics from Dubai. There (in many restaurants) a great deal of fish is pointed at, weighed, simply grilled and served.

sazerac wrote:
Miel de caña - I think that's how it is commonly known in S. America. (see the pic here)

That makes sense. Incidentally, the cane syrup is delicious. I used it in a pecan pie. Smokey, rich and complex beyond my regular favorite, Steen's cane syrup.

sazerac wrote:Just curious crrush, was the family van at the chorizo shop earlier? Also how tall was the boy (short enough so that he wouldn't be able to see out the window of the van easily) and was the road quite bumpy? In which case your chorizo was a victim to the kid's motion sickness.

I'm sure his hurling wasn't the result of the chorizo. It was more of a timing thing for me. The joke of taunting Chris by eating the chorizo kind of lost its punch with that very visual reminder. I'd go back and eat a whole string of those links if I could pick up more of the cane syrup, too.