You can stay busy finding your favorite restaurant at Las Terrenas, the town where you can find almost all the best restaurants on the peninsula. Particularly memorable is the collection of eight shoulder-to-shoulder restaurants on the beach called Pueblo de los Pescadores. These are on stilts above the sand, a few paces from the water.
Although you'll be able to get meat, fish is the island specialty here, and is available far and wide. Mero (grouper) and dorado (mahimahi) are the most abundant—you can find the traditional Dominican preparation of pescado al coco (coconut fish) virtually everywhere. Shrimp and lobster also readily available. Passion fruit, called chinola, is an abundant staple, as well as banana (guineo), orange (naranja), and giant papaya (lechoza). Chinola makes a great fresh-squeezed breakfast juice, especially mixed with pineapple (piña).
All restaurants have bars and serve as the nightlife focal points. Expect to pay around $8 to $15 for most entrées in this chapter; restaurants in the D.R. always charge in pesos, but you can sometimes pay in dollars.