Restaurant Near San Jose Airport
 

Hello, We have 3 hours after we arrive at San Hose airport before we take Sansa Air to Osa. Any places someone could suggest that are near the airport and open on Sunday--that seems to be a big hurdle.
Is it closer to look at restaurants in Allejeula than San Jose and what about Escazu?
Had been eyeing C'Vichitas in Allejuela and also Product C or La Divina Comida in Escazu. These are open on Sunday--any idea how far these would be?
Is Grano de Oro close to the airport?
We don't eat meat so some we ruled out and of course so many were ruled out for us because it is a Sunday we are arriving.

Thank you

Are you looking to go to a nice restaurant or just have a good meal? There's actually a new restaurant in the airport that's good, not fast food like the other spots, and they even serve drinks. I believe it's called Malinche - it's a sit down spot and has some typical Costa Rican meals. We were surprised because we've only seen Burger King, Cinnabon, Schlotzsky's, etc. on previous trips.

We've stayed at Grano de Oro. I think it was about 20 minutes or so from the airport. Their food was fantastic, much more upscale than most food we've had in CR. Great friendly service too.

Here's the link if you want to explore this one.

http://www.restaurantemalinche.com/

volcanogirl:
Thank you--the time we have will determine where we go. If we run late then traveling to Grano de Oro and having sit down service may be an issue. I'm glad to hear there is an option in the airport if we need it. And they are open Sunday!
How long has it typically taken you to go through customs once you arrive? And have you gone to Sansa Air after that--is it right there? I believe they require us to be there a bit in advance of the flight -- 45 minutes if I recall.

When I checked their schedule, they were open on Sunday, but you can look online and doublecheck me to see if that's still accurate. The time it takes to get through customs varies quite a bit; the longest we've had is 3 hours over a 4th of July holiday when it was packed - that was awful, to as little as five or ten minutes when we were the only people in line - awesome. In general, I'd say it averages about 30 minutes, but it all depends on how many flights land at once. Sansa is right next door to SJO. In my opinion, it would be a hassle to leave the airport, go eat somewhere else, and then come back, but up to you if you have a specific place that you want to try.

I think it makes sense to stay at the airport especially considering the unknown of customs and then needing to get our flight on Sansa.
Thank you for that input!

Sure, hope you have a great time!

Hope the OP doesn't mind if I piggyback onto this thread - We're going to be in a similar boat but not sure the timing will work well for us. We arrive from a red-eye to San Jose at 5:40 a.m. and have a flight on Sansa at 8:20 a.m. to Drake Bay. That restaurant sounds nice, VolcanoGirl, but it doesn't open til 7 a.m. and we'll need to be at our Sansa flight by 7:35 so I think that would probably be too rushed to eat at the restaurant that opens at 7. I wonder if anything else to eat at the airport will be open before 7? And hoping we get through customs in about an hour or we're going to have a hard time eating anything and making our plane! We are arriving at San Jose on a Saturday a.m. by the way.

Oh never mind, answered my own question ha ha - in case it helps anyone else, here's the SJO list of places to eat: http://www.fly2sanjose.com/front/pt3.php?ref=7 Sounds like Malinche has a few locations in the airport and a couple of them open earlier than others. We don't need anything too fancy, but 2 of us are vegetarians so it's nice to have options.

That's a good list, Jane - thanks for posting it. I forgot that Schlotzsky's got replaced by Quiznos. The list has Smashburger on it - have not seen that one yet, but we have them here, and their food is great, higher quality than fast food. The service at Malinche was a little slow, I think because they are actually cooking and not just heating stuff up. We got a kick out of the way some of the things on the menu were translated.