Y and I agree - our favorite meals weren't the ones in the gourmet restaurants. They were the local ones.
While we were on our ziplining excursion, our guide took our group to a local beach. We ate at this restaurant called Emma's, which is just a kitchen covered by a hut with wooden tables and plastic chairs outside. Here's the front (in the middle background) and the back of the building.
This is Emma. Doesn't she just radiate warmth?
She served us rice and beans cooked in coconut milk, salad, and sauteed chicken with a dry rub. That chicken is in my Top 5 Chicken of All Time.
Our second favorite meal was the first meal we had. When we got to the resort, it was past 7:00 p.m. local time and we had been travelling all day. We dumped our bags in the room and went to the resort's buffet restaurant for Dominican night.
The traditional staple: sancocho! Our concierge recommended the sancocho which is a traditional Dominican stew. It's kind of like gumbo but with potatoes, plantains, and pork (at least, I hope that was pork) and can be served over rice.
The filler: grilled tomatoes. Just Roma tomatoes cut in half lengthwise, simply seasoned and grilled. I'm not sure why they were so delicious. We ate a lot of tomatoes, and they were plentiful.
The "Please, Sir, can I have some more?" dish: plantain mangu with onion. Looks like grits (or gruel) with sauteed yellow onion and each bite got better and better. I was really bummed that I only got it twice.
The eat-every-day-twice-a-day favorite: passion fruit with sugar (chinola con dos azucars).
This is passion fruit. It looks like eyeballs submerged in goo. BTW, the eyeballs are crunchy.
So the first night we were there, we each got a half to try. I took my first bite. It was tart, similar to grapefruit. As I was making an awful face, a waiter named Miguel walked by and started laughing. He quickly came back with two sugar packets, one for me and one for Y. We stirred the sugar in and I tried again. Delightful.
We became fast friends with Miguel, and twice a day when we saw him, I would say, "Miguel! Como esta? Muy bien, todo bien! Dos azucars para las chinolas, por favor! Muchas gracias!"
My typical go-to breakfast: fruit and a piece of French toast. There was bacon one morning, so...that was a good day. : )
I also grew to love the hot chocolate. Start with American hot chocolate and add more milk and a ton of cinnamon. It was one of those things that was weird at first but I kept drinking it for some reason (eww, this is gross - taste it!), and then I got it again the next day.
And this was my one this-is-so-crazy-I-can't-believe-I'm-about-to-eat-this dish: fried quail egg served with sauteed onion and on top of toast. It was alright. I finished it but didn't get it again.
And I'm happy to report that I only gained 4 pounds. : )
