Food Journal Week 4

It is not at all weird or different to eat in my new home, at the family’s dinner table, every night. My tican grandparents are not unlike my parents in the States, who prefer to eat out maybe three or four times per year for special occasions. Two of the grandchildren in my family regularly stop by to have one of their grandma’s filling homemade meals, which seems to be as frequent a stop for these ticos as would be a Taco Bell or Chik-fil-a for a teenager in the States. The idea of a “special occasion” meant, for my family, something more along the lines of a meal with family in another family member’s house, wherein the host prepares alone or the host and family guests prepare the food together. Judging by the strong bounds and closeness within my family here, my grandparents idea of a good meal likely resonates with their children and grandchildren. Whereas, in the States, my mom might go out to Starbucks to meet a friend, my tican grandparent’s sons will come alone or with someone else to our house to sit, talk, and enjoy coffee in the home. This starkly reminds me of Barthes article and the consumer culture in the U.S. that permeates all of our, sometimes subconscious, day-to-day choices or habits with food.

While listing a wide variety of restaurant types to my tican grandparents, when I said “Chinese or China”, my grandmother gave a hilarious grunt that was full of disgust. At the notion of a popular restaurant, they said I would have to ask someone younger. There grandson, Felipe, was hesitant to point a single restaurant but did say that some of the chains from the States are “well known.” For what, I wonder? He thought it depended on your lifestyle and work whether or not you ate out often and where. His example was the difference between a “business guy” that works in the city, meeting with people often, or a schoolteacher who usually has a consistent, structured schedule. The former would prefer the most modern, probably more States-influenced places, and the latter would probably eat in the home most often. After I told him it was similar up North, he got a little defensive about ticos and said that they could never eat like “that.” Regardless, they all agreed that Italian and French restaurants are esteemed, while anything with a Chinese flavor is worthless.

I visited many restaurants in the city this Saturday past. Most of them were no larger than a normal-sized room, crammed among a host of other eateries or venders of all sorts. The most interesting places were in a central marketplace that is unlike any I have ever seen, with myriad dealers in a labyrinth of small walkways and interesting smells.  The majority served casado or arroz con… dishes only. If compared to a McDonald’s here, the one near Rotunda de la Bandera for instance, there is hardly a comparison to be had. Three characteristics stood out about the McD. I visited. First, an assistant took my order in line before the register on a small sheet of paper labeled with every possible combination of I’m lovin’ it possibilities. They served pineapple pies. And, they had a semi-enclosed space where you might setup a laptop and access the Internet while you eat. It is easy to guess which of these was not surprising and which were.