Panamanian Cuisine

Signature dishes and flavors

One of Panama's typical dishes, carimañola, consists of the tuber yuca, ground and boiled and made into a dumpling that's filled with minced beef or chicken and pieces of boiled egg. It's a Panamanian breakfast staple. Sancocho is the other dish that truly says "Panama." This chicken and yuca soup—sometimes prepared as thick as a stew—is flavored with culantro (think "cilantro," but slightly more aromatic.) It's reputed to be good for whatever ails you and also makes for a surprisingly cooling dish on a sweltering day. To make the descriptively named ropa vieja ("old clothes"), a Panamanian cook stews beef with tomato and onion until it can be shredded with a fork and then serves it with rice. Ropa vieja is one of the few Panamanian dishes that can be spicy.

Cooks here make a variation on Mexican tamales—the singular is tamal—with a filling of chicken, peas, onions, and cornmeal boiled inside tied plantain leaves. You eat the filling but not the leaves, and certainly not the string. Every Latin American country claims its own variation on empanadas. Panamanians make semicircular ones with a filling of ground beef, chicken, or cheese deep fried and served as a snack or appetizer. Caribbean cooks often add plantain to the filling.

Almojábana, corn-flour bread, and patacones, salted green plantains fried golden brown and pounded into crispy chips, accompany many meals. Hojaldras (fried bread) is a popular alternative to toast with breakfast. It can also be eaten sweet, sprinkled with sugar, like doughnuts.

Seafood

With 1,500 miles of coastline, seafood is everywhere. Corvina, a white sea bass, frequently shows up as the main ingredient in ceviche. Whatever kind of cubed pieces of fish or seafood is used, Panamanian ceviche is marinated in lime juice, with onion and celery and sometimes hot pepper and served chilled as an appetizer.

Beverages

Seco, a distilled sugarcane firewater, is commonly tempered with chilled milk. For a smooth easy beverage, try chicheme, a blend of milk, cornmeal, cinnamon, and vanilla. And beverages don't come more basic than the ubiquitous pipa. Poke a hole in an unripe coconut, stick in a straw, and you have a refreshing drink of coconut juice. Roadside stands everywhere sell them.