food in panama, breakfast picture post
I know i've been writing a bit vaguely about the sad state of food in Panama, and i haven't done all that many picture posts considering all the things i have eaten. Before i continue my travels, i'll try get a couple out. This one is a themed picture post - breakfast in Panama!
The opening shot is not technically a Panamanian breakfast, but a Venezuelan breakfast. It was a homemade arepa, made by my host family last year. Arepas are a sort of fried sandwich that Venezuelans eat for pretty much every meal of the day. The bread is something like cornbread, but it's cooked on the spot like a pancake. The simple filling is just cheese and/or ham, but this one is a bit special because it has (canned) tuna and mayo inside.
My next photo is not really a full breakfast, but a preview of the sorts of pictures that will be to come. When thinking about breakfasts in Panama, you need to think about the Monty Python SPAM sketch, except instead of SPAM it's hojaldres. What is a hojaldre (also spelled hojaldra)? It's a fucking frybread is what it is. It's pretty much exactly the same as North American native frybread. Very similar to Chinese 油條 youtiao. Fat, flour, pinch of salt or sugar, deep fried, the end. You can buy them from all of the fondas (small kiosks/hole-in-the-wall eateries) and from street vendors with little deep-frying carts, which is by far the most common street vendor in Panama.
Okay, let's get cracking on the meat of this post. Often for breakfast in Panama i gave up on trying to eat vegan, because it's very hard to do aside from just having a hojaldre with nothing. Most of the fondas sell various stews containing meatballs and sausages, but that was a step too far for me for breakfast. Who all has room in their stomach for meat and gravy at breakfast time!? Jesus, they sell fucking fried chicken for breakfast here too. I only went as far as the eggs. Here is a meal featuring a chicken empanada, a tortilla and scrambled eggs. I know, i know, you're looking at the picture and going "where's the tortilla?" Well, in Panama, a tortilla is not the same thing that we call a tortilla in Canada or the US. A tortilla is a thick pattie of cornmeal that is deep fried. It tastes a bit like a McDonald's hashbrown, if the hashbrown was made of corn instead of potato. You will also notice that the empanada here is deep fried too. Everything is deep fried. I wouldn't be surprised if they deep fried the fucking scrambled eggs.
Here is a minimal version of breakfast. Black coffee. Hojaldre. Fried egg. A breakfast like this costs under $2. Notice how everything comes in polystyrene containers. They're ubiquitous here.
Along with the fried chicken and the deep fried everything you can get for breakfast here, you can also get deep fried chunks of yuca (cassava). They're so heavy and fatty, it's like eating bricks. To "lighten it up", i decided to get a bollo as well. What is a bollo? A bollo is an awful lot like a tamale. It is a sort of steamed cornmeal wrapped in a banana leaf or a corn husk. But it's not considered the same thing as a tamale for some reason. Now, i thought this was going to be delicious because steamed corn, surely that would be nice and light? WRONGO. The default bollo is a bollo de mantequilla. So the cornmeal is mixed with a metric shit-ton of butter and then steamed. It's literally like eating an entire stick of butter. For fuck's sake.
The next day i tried to get a tamale instead. This is probably the most healthy breakfast i succeeded in getting. It's steamed plantain instead of deep fried plantain, plus an actual tamale like you would recognize it in North America. There is a little bit of pork in the middle of that tamale, but not enough to make me feel like i was eating something way too heavy for breakfast. Unfortunately, these tamales are not very common, either because they are incredibly popular and all sold out when i am trying to eat (before 8am) or more likely they are not popular at all because they aren't deep fried enough.
Actually, this breakfast coming up wasn't too bad either. I found a fonda that allegedly did Peruvian breakfasts, although to be honest most of the stuff looked exactly the same as the Panamanian fondas. This one features actual cornbread like you can get in the south of the US, a boiled egg, and a bollo. But, critically, this was a bollo de mais nuevo! That's a bollo without butter in it, just really creamy, flavorful, young corn. It's steamed in a corn husk and it actually tastes like fucking corn instead of butter or oil. I know, incredible.
Hojaldre. With scrambled eggs. Why do they put meat in the scrambled eggs? I don't fucking know.
Hojaldre. With a boiled egg. And maduros. "Maduros" is the term for mature/ripe plantains, so they taste a little bit sweet. Note the bright red hot sauce. This is some kind of weird hot sauce that they have in fondas owned by ethnic Chinese, it's very vinegar-y and not especially spicy, but in a lot of places it's literally the only option that exists for making the food taste like anything.
Sometimes there aren't even any hojaldres, so enter the ubiquitous patacon. Patacones, in case you missed my last food post, are mashed up plantains that are formed into a disc and then deep fried, twice. They are extremely crispy, taste pretty much of nothing, and almost certainly are very unhealthy. Along with hojaldres and fried yucas they make up the unholy breakfast trinity of starchy deep fried ridiculousness.
Oh, hello, it's another fucking hojaldre. With maduros. And a fried egg. Help me. I am turning into a hojaldre.
This was a failed attempt to try to construct a breakfast sandwich using two tortillas and a fried egg. I didn't realize until i started eating it that two tortillas with a fried egg in the middle is essentially like eating two layers of crust off a deep fryer with deep fried goo in the middle. It was so heavy i could barely finish it. What's shocking is that locals actually order tortillas and fucking hojaldres too. And deep fried yucas. Like, they order multiple deep fried starches as part of their standard breakfast. It's insane.
And thus, with a whimper, ends the review of Panamanian breakfasts. But amw, i hear you cry, why don't they eat the fruits that literally grow on trees by the side of the road? The answer is nobody knows the answer. You can get fresh bananas here, fresh mangos, fresh papayas, fresh passionfruit, fresh pineapple, fresh melon, fresh just about any tropical fruit you can imagine, but even still you cannot buy it ready to eat from a street vendor. Sure, you can buy the fruit, take it home, wash it, cut it up yourself, and then eat a decent breakfast. But nobody does it. Not for breakfast anyway. Apparently breakfast doesn't count unless it had meat in it and a whole shit ton of deep fryer oil. Don't even get me started on ordering a "fruit salad" for lunch one day and it came with fucking Maraschino cherries in it. For fuck's sake. But more on other meals of the day in a future post.
The opening shot is not technically a Panamanian breakfast, but a Venezuelan breakfast. It was a homemade arepa, made by my host family last year. Arepas are a sort of fried sandwich that Venezuelans eat for pretty much every meal of the day. The bread is something like cornbread, but it's cooked on the spot like a pancake. The simple filling is just cheese and/or ham, but this one is a bit special because it has (canned) tuna and mayo inside.
My next photo is not really a full breakfast, but a preview of the sorts of pictures that will be to come. When thinking about breakfasts in Panama, you need to think about the Monty Python SPAM sketch, except instead of SPAM it's hojaldres. What is a hojaldre (also spelled hojaldra)? It's a fucking frybread is what it is. It's pretty much exactly the same as North American native frybread. Very similar to Chinese 油條 youtiao. Fat, flour, pinch of salt or sugar, deep fried, the end. You can buy them from all of the fondas (small kiosks/hole-in-the-wall eateries) and from street vendors with little deep-frying carts, which is by far the most common street vendor in Panama.
Okay, let's get cracking on the meat of this post. Often for breakfast in Panama i gave up on trying to eat vegan, because it's very hard to do aside from just having a hojaldre with nothing. Most of the fondas sell various stews containing meatballs and sausages, but that was a step too far for me for breakfast. Who all has room in their stomach for meat and gravy at breakfast time!? Jesus, they sell fucking fried chicken for breakfast here too. I only went as far as the eggs. Here is a meal featuring a chicken empanada, a tortilla and scrambled eggs. I know, i know, you're looking at the picture and going "where's the tortilla?" Well, in Panama, a tortilla is not the same thing that we call a tortilla in Canada or the US. A tortilla is a thick pattie of cornmeal that is deep fried. It tastes a bit like a McDonald's hashbrown, if the hashbrown was made of corn instead of potato. You will also notice that the empanada here is deep fried too. Everything is deep fried. I wouldn't be surprised if they deep fried the fucking scrambled eggs.
Here is a minimal version of breakfast. Black coffee. Hojaldre. Fried egg. A breakfast like this costs under $2. Notice how everything comes in polystyrene containers. They're ubiquitous here.
Along with the fried chicken and the deep fried everything you can get for breakfast here, you can also get deep fried chunks of yuca (cassava). They're so heavy and fatty, it's like eating bricks. To "lighten it up", i decided to get a bollo as well. What is a bollo? A bollo is an awful lot like a tamale. It is a sort of steamed cornmeal wrapped in a banana leaf or a corn husk. But it's not considered the same thing as a tamale for some reason. Now, i thought this was going to be delicious because steamed corn, surely that would be nice and light? WRONGO. The default bollo is a bollo de mantequilla. So the cornmeal is mixed with a metric shit-ton of butter and then steamed. It's literally like eating an entire stick of butter. For fuck's sake.
The next day i tried to get a tamale instead. This is probably the most healthy breakfast i succeeded in getting. It's steamed plantain instead of deep fried plantain, plus an actual tamale like you would recognize it in North America. There is a little bit of pork in the middle of that tamale, but not enough to make me feel like i was eating something way too heavy for breakfast. Unfortunately, these tamales are not very common, either because they are incredibly popular and all sold out when i am trying to eat (before 8am) or more likely they are not popular at all because they aren't deep fried enough.
Actually, this breakfast coming up wasn't too bad either. I found a fonda that allegedly did Peruvian breakfasts, although to be honest most of the stuff looked exactly the same as the Panamanian fondas. This one features actual cornbread like you can get in the south of the US, a boiled egg, and a bollo. But, critically, this was a bollo de mais nuevo! That's a bollo without butter in it, just really creamy, flavorful, young corn. It's steamed in a corn husk and it actually tastes like fucking corn instead of butter or oil. I know, incredible.
Hojaldre. With scrambled eggs. Why do they put meat in the scrambled eggs? I don't fucking know.
Hojaldre. With a boiled egg. And maduros. "Maduros" is the term for mature/ripe plantains, so they taste a little bit sweet. Note the bright red hot sauce. This is some kind of weird hot sauce that they have in fondas owned by ethnic Chinese, it's very vinegar-y and not especially spicy, but in a lot of places it's literally the only option that exists for making the food taste like anything.
Sometimes there aren't even any hojaldres, so enter the ubiquitous patacon. Patacones, in case you missed my last food post, are mashed up plantains that are formed into a disc and then deep fried, twice. They are extremely crispy, taste pretty much of nothing, and almost certainly are very unhealthy. Along with hojaldres and fried yucas they make up the unholy breakfast trinity of starchy deep fried ridiculousness.
Oh, hello, it's another fucking hojaldre. With maduros. And a fried egg. Help me. I am turning into a hojaldre.
This was a failed attempt to try to construct a breakfast sandwich using two tortillas and a fried egg. I didn't realize until i started eating it that two tortillas with a fried egg in the middle is essentially like eating two layers of crust off a deep fryer with deep fried goo in the middle. It was so heavy i could barely finish it. What's shocking is that locals actually order tortillas and fucking hojaldres too. And deep fried yucas. Like, they order multiple deep fried starches as part of their standard breakfast. It's insane.
And thus, with a whimper, ends the review of Panamanian breakfasts. But amw, i hear you cry, why don't they eat the fruits that literally grow on trees by the side of the road? The answer is nobody knows the answer. You can get fresh bananas here, fresh mangos, fresh papayas, fresh passionfruit, fresh pineapple, fresh melon, fresh just about any tropical fruit you can imagine, but even still you cannot buy it ready to eat from a street vendor. Sure, you can buy the fruit, take it home, wash it, cut it up yourself, and then eat a decent breakfast. But nobody does it. Not for breakfast anyway. Apparently breakfast doesn't count unless it had meat in it and a whole shit ton of deep fryer oil. Don't even get me started on ordering a "fruit salad" for lunch one day and it came with fucking Maraschino cherries in it. For fuck's sake. But more on other meals of the day in a future post.