Restaurants Overview

Your palate will be pleasantly amused by the range of dining choices available in Puerto Rico. In San Juan you can find more than 200 restaurants serving everything from Italian to Thai, as well as superb local eateries serving comida criolla (traditional creole food). All of San Juan's large hotels have fine restaurants, but some of the city's best eateries are stand-alone, and smaller hotels also often present good options. There's also a mind-boggling array of U.S. chain restaurants. No matter your price range or taste, San Juan is a great place to eat.

Mesónes gastronómicos are restaurants recognized by the government for preserving culinary traditions. There are more than 40 islandwide. (Although there are fine restaurants in the system, the mesón gastronómico label is not an automatic symbol of quality.) Wherever you go, it's always good to make reservations in the busy season, from mid-November through April, in restaurants where they're accepted.

Puerto Rican cooking uses a lot of local vegetables: plantains are cooked a hundred different ways -- as tostones (fried green), amarillos (baked ripe), in mofongo (mashed, fried plantains), and as chips. Rice and beans with tostones or amarillos are accompaniments to almost every dish. Locals cook white rice with habichuelas (red beans), achiote (annatto seeds), or saffron; brown rice with gandules (pigeon peas); and morro (black rice) with frijoles negros (black beans). Yams and other root vegetables, such as yucca and yautía (yams), are served baked, fried, stuffed, boiled, and mashed. Sofrito -- a garlic, onion, sweet pepper, coriander, oregano, and tomato puree -- is used as a base for practically everything.

Beef, chicken, pork, and seafood are rubbed with adobo, a garlic-oregano marinade, before cooking. Arroz con pollo (chicken with rice), sancocho (beef or chicken and tuber soup), asopao (a soupy rice gumbo with chicken or seafood), and encebollado (steak smothered in onions) are all typical plates. Also look for fritters served along highways and beaches. You may find empanadillas (stuffed fried turnovers), sorullitos (cheese-stuffed corn sticks), alcapurrias (stuffed green-banana croquettes), and bacalaítos (codfish fritters). Caribbean lobster, available mainly at coastal restaurants, is sweeter and easier to eat than Maine lobster, and there's always plentiful fresh dolphinfish and red snapper. Conch is prepared in a chilled ceviche salad or stuffed with tomato sauce inside fritters.

Puerto Rican coffee is excellent black or con leche (with hot milk). The origin of the piña colada is attributed to numerous places, from the Caribe Hilton to a Fortaleza Street bar. Puerto Rican rums range from light mixers to dark, aged liqueurs. Look for Bacardí, Don Q, Ron Rico, Palo Viejo, and Barrilito.