Street Food in Nicaragua

The food here in Nica has been on a different carnivorean level than in Guatemala, or Honduras for that matter. I think that partially due to this the people here are much bigger here in Nica than in Honduras or especially Guate. This leads to all sorts of fights on the bus when people are asked to sit three to a seat to the point where I've seen the ayudante getting his fists ready. Back to the food - everything you order here comes with two or three huge pieces of pork, chicken or beef (occasionally lamb if it is the right area) and green cabbage salad. Then there are soups and tamale type things and delicious fried fish at the beach. This isn't to say that you can't be a happy vegetarian here in Nica because you can. The mangoes are ripe and we are definitely in the tropics now and they everything from carambola to mamey, to coco, plantain and a whole bunch of melon like things I that I don't know how to call them. Everyone sells refrescos, which are like juices with some sugar and the gallo pinto is enough meal for two (gallo pinto equals rice and beans together. Below are some of my favorite street dishes from Nica.


The first is a nacatamale. It is basically the same as a mexican tamale but it is soft. They fill it with corn or potato and chicken or pork or beef. You put some pica and vinegar onions on the top and it is ready to go. They cook it overnight to give the tamale that sort of gelatinous jellyfish look, at least I think that is what they are going for.


This is what they call vigorron and it is close to a national dish here. They get a bunch of mashed yucca, put cabbage salad on top and then cover it in pork skins and hot sauce. Yeah, and those are like pickled sweet peppers you see sticking out of the cabbage. They usually give a piece of real crackle like skin and then something a little softer with meat and fat in it. Not much else to say...I'll just let you enjoy the picture.


This one is called baho and I did not enjoy myself. When it was served to me instead of meat I got about six ounces of fat. The kid who served it even told me that it was fat but I thought he meant like this is delicious because we give you some fat with your meat. I mean, who doesn't like a little beef fat in their meal. They also have plantains and yucca and serve it with salad. They wrap it in a little plastic bag and you kind of slurp your bajo while hoping to not get it down the front of your shirt. It boils for hours and I wish it would have been better because it looks like it could be superb.


This last is the beef soup. I've found everywhere you go people say the soup is the special dish, the best dish, the one to try. Seeing that it is hard to muck up something you cook for 8-12 hours (the exception being baho) I usually find they are right. In this case the soup was great but the meat was 90 percent gristle and tendon. I felt like I was eating pho but I didn't order the tendon and it wasn't sliced so it was chewable. But check the spoon, way more useful than a normal spoon for cutting and eating soup. I think it is an old dried gourd.


Lastly, these are the fish we spearfished down in San Juan del Sur. Went out for snapper, came back with snapper. Snapper is in the middle and the left is a grunt and to the right is a juvenille hogfish.