Enlarge image i You'd think tropical fruit would be all over the place on a Caribbean island. But we had to search pretty hard to discover these beauties.
You'd think tropical fruit would be all over the place on a Caribbean island. But we had to search pretty hard to uncover these beauties.
To be clear, the journey I took a couple of weeks in the past to Puerto Rico with an NPR group was not about food. We headed down to the island to report on the financial and crime troubles that are driving people off the island and to Florida in record numbers. And however we did tons of advance exploration about census figures and crime statistics, none of us truly looked up very good areas to eat.
In a tropical, Latin land, we assumed we'd be pretty much stumbling over savory community meals and exotic fruits.
The reality ? Not so a lot.
When we asked for fruit juice, our possibilities would be orange or perhaps apple. And although we stored observe for roadside meals stands as we drove miles across the island, we noticed very couple of.
We also searched high and lower for scrumptious guanabana. Alas, it took us days to locate it, and when we did, it was frozen, and $ 5 a pound.
But here's the fascinating element. Wilo Benet, a Puerto Rican celebrity chef (we're talking Prime Chef Masters), says our culinary hunt truly illustrates the odd economics of foods on the island: For the most portion, what's grown there is exported, and the huge vast majority of what's eaten by islanders 80 percent or a lot more, according to some sources is truly imported, largely from the mainland U.S.
Puerto Rican mangoes and passion fruit, Benet says, mostly finish up in London grocery shops. And though "we have huge fish right here," he says, "New York will pay out prime dollar for it. " A fisherman "would never ever make [that type of] income right here."
Meanwhile, that guanabana? It was possibly so hard to come across and so expensive mainly because it was shipped in from elsewhere, Benet tells me.
Which is because in the middle of the 20th century, Puerto Rico's leaders pushed to "modernize" the island, which speedily transformed from an agricultural economic climate to an industrial one.
Enlarge image i NPR host David Greene demonstrates off a guanabana bought immediately after a prolonged search for 1 in Puerto Rico.
NPR host David Greene shows off a guanabana purchased after a lengthy search for a single in Puerto Rico.
"Puerto Rican agriculture virtually collapsed," writes Gustavo Setrini, who research the island's economy at the MIT Center For Worldwide Research.
The consequences are evident in a striking anecdote Benet shared with me. Back in 1996, when he was cooking for the Puerto Rican committee in Atlanta in the course of the Summertime Olympics, he says, "it was less complicated for me in Atlanta, Ga., to buy a situation of Puerto Rican breadfruit than it is for me to do that at my restaurant in San Juan."
And here's a different funny issue : Back in San Juan, when we'd request for restaurant suggestions, locals sent us to sushi and taco joints. " Correct regular, down property - fashion destinations are not that several," Benet says, speaking from Pikayo, his modern, fine dining restaurant in San Juan.
There are some hole-in-the-wall-kiosks that are difficult to come across, he says, and a burgeoning fine dining scene. But eating places with basic, classic Puerto Rican fare?
Individuals varieties of locations are really hard to preserve open, due to the fact modern-day palates demand fusion menus and American classics, he says. So unless of course you know a very good regional home cook, fantastic luck.
Even now, it really is well worth performing your culinary study prior to heading to the island, due to the fact great local meals can be discovered, says Maricel Presilla, an expert on pan-Latin cuisine.
"Mofongo," she says a neighborhood staple of mashed green plantains, typically filled with meat or seafood "can be a thing of wonder."
If only I had called her ahead of I left.
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