Puerto Viejo · Food

Between the bus stop and the football field you get sodas, bakeries, Italian kitchens and Caribbean cooks more or less side by side, and that stretch is effectively the entire restaurant scene. Prices drop noticeably the further you walk back from the seafront.

A small bakery and breakfast place a street back from the seafront, doing bread, house-made chocolate and cooked breakfasts. It is popular and it is tiny, so expect to queue at peak breakfast time.

A long-running family Caribbean kitchen out at Punta Uva, about 7 km south of town, cooking rice and beans, whole fish and rondón. Opening days are limited and shift with the season, so ask in the village or call ahead rather than cycling out on spec.

Caribbean rice and beans here is cooked in coconut milk and is a different dish from a Central Valley casado; rondón is a slow coconut seafood stew that most kitchens want ordered hours in advance. Pati, a spiced meat turnover, is the thing to buy from a counter for a few hundred colones.