4 Best Restaurants in Chiriqui Province, Panama

There is something European about the stone building that houses this restaurant a short drive northeast of town, which is made complete with authentic Italian cuisine. The small dining room is on the ground floor overlooking a stream surrounded by trees and impatiens; an outdoor patio sits beside a small waterfall. The menu includes fresh pastas such as vegetable lasagna and fettuccine del Chef (with prawn-and-mushroom cream sauce) or napolitano (with tomato-clam sauce). You can also build your own pizza or calzone or grab a pizza to go.

Surprisingly good pizza is served at this small, Italian-owned open-air restaurant a short walk from the beach. The thin pies baked in a wood-burning brick oven would be popular in Panama City, but they taste that much better served at the edge of civilization. On holidays and dry-season weekends the place can get packed, and it stays open late as locals and visitors top off their dinners with cold beers and good music. Service is relatively slow, so if your stomach is grumbling, get there by 6:30 pm if you don't want to wait longer than an hour for your food.

Smack at the end of the main road to Santa Catalina, this beachside restaurant has a fine selection of seafood and Italian dishes, with recipes for pollo a la scalopina and filete de pescado a la mediterránea taken straight from the cookbook of the Italian owner's mother. With a great sunset view of the bay at Playa Santa Catalina, finer dining in a more sandals-optional location won't be found.

This simple restaurant serves 17 varieties of good pizza, as well as mediocre pastas, many meat and seafood dishes, and inexpensive, three-course lunch specials. The decor is limited to vibrant tablecloths and tacky art, but the place is clean, bright, air-conditioned, and very popular.