Typical Costa Rican food

What are meals like in Costa Rica? What is typical Costa Rican food? While there is certainly a great variety, the simplest answer can be illustrated by the song below. In this blog post I will describe common Costa Rican breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, then finally some differences between the American and Costa Rican preparation of some foods.

Seriously, it wouldn't be hard to get rice and beans for every meal for the duration of your stay

Breakfast

The only breakfast you will ever see in Costa Rica is gallo pinto and scrambled eggs. Maybe with toast, maybe with sausage, maybe with potatoes. Always with gallo pinto, and always with eggs. Gallo pinto is a dish made with white rice and black beans mixed together with cilantro. Some people love it, but after 7 weeks I was no longer a fan. Scrambled eggs are scrambled eggs and don't really vary from what I knew from America. They usually don't have cheese in them, but that's true of many American hotel breakfasts, too. As a beverage people drink coffee or some sort of fruit juice. Common choices of juice for breakfast are mango, papaya, blackberry, or cas (a small citrus-y fruit that only grows in Costa Rica)--though hotels that often cater to Americans will also have orange juice. 

Restaurants tend to have a bigger variety though. You can easily find omelettes, breakfast pastries (usually bread with ham, cheese, and/or fruit baked inside), or french toast served at sodas, the "typical food" restaurants. 

Lunch

I have read that Costa Ricans prefer that lunch be the largest meal of the day. In my experience it was approximately the same size as dinner, though perhaps a bit larger. If you're traveling and eating out all the time or cooking your own meals that doesn't matter.

The options for lunch are much more diverse, especially at restaurants. Throughout Costa Rica there are very many "sodas" that serve typical Costa Rican food. There are also lots of fried chicken restaurants (many general stores will even have a small counter that has some fried chicken for sale), pizza places, Asian restaurants, and more American fast food than you're used to seeing. The chains I saw were Taco Bell, Subway, Quiznos, McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and KFC. ALL of them are gigantic, two-story, and extremely nice. You will definitely have plenty of opportunities to quench American fast food cravings. However, the prices at these restaurants are a good bit higher than they are in the U.S. for most of the items. For example, soft serve ice cream at McDonald's is relatively very cheap, but it costs much more to get a soft drink. It is approximately the same price--if not cheaper--to eat a healthier meal elsewhere and try the local food. 

In my host home, I received a wide variety of meals, but again with the constant staple of white rice and black beans. I ate various soups, rotisserie-style meat, taquitos, and a great deal of "picadillo" (pica dilly). Picadillo is a dish of a vegetable cut into little pieces mixed in with ground beef. Vegetable options include potato, yucca, choyote, and other starchy tuber-like foods. Hot dogs and tuna are frequent protein options. Pasta is a fairly common dish, almost always with a tomato sauce. My favorite dishes were cannelloni (a big pasta tube stuffed with cheese and maybe other fillings and baked) and sopa Azteca (tomato-based sauce with rotisserie chicken, cheese, and pieces of tortilla chip).

Dinner

The options for dinner are the same in restaurants as there are for lunch. Something I didn't mention before was that near the coast fish and ceviche are very easy to find, though beware. On the Caribbean coast people have the habit of shipping frozen fish from the Pacific coast because it's still cheaper than buying from local producers, so your fish taco in Puerto Viejo may not be as fresh as you're hoping. Granted, the opposite coast is only 8 hours away by car. 

In Costa Rican homes however, dinner frequently consists of leftovers from lunch plus tortillas and more rice and beans. Usually another vegetable is prepared also. If it isn't leftovers, dinner is often some sort of piece of meat over rice and beans, like a pork chop or steak. The meat I was served most often was pork, and many people eat tuna all the time (I don't personally like it). Again there was also a good deal of pasta. 

Desserts & Beverages

It could definitely be said that Costa Ricans have a sizable sweet tooth. Ice cream is immensely popular. Almost every fast food restaurant has a separate register or two directly by the street entrance for people to more easily get desserts. These counters almost exclusively sell ice cream. Most tiny convenience stores sell ice cream bars and sandwiches, and there are men who walk around with carts selling it.

In my host home there was usually no ice cream, though. Cookies were very popular, usually sugar cookies with cream in the center like an Oreo. Important note: the Oreos do not taste good, I wouldn't bother buying them. They are manufactured in Nicaragua so there is a big difference in the taste of the ingredients. You can't even find double-stuffed ones anyway. Also common is "pan dulce" (sweet bread) and rice pudding, served warm. 

Since staying in Costa Rica, I have fully converted to the cult of Mexican Coke. I don't know about all of Latin and South America, but in Costa Rica the Coke is produced in Mexico, so it has real sugar in it instead of corn syrup. The price is approximately the same if not a bit lower (you pay between $1.20 and $2.00 for a 600mL plastic bottle), but it tastes so much better and is only 10 more calories per serving than its American counterpart. Coke is pretty much ubiquitous in Costa Rica, though some restaurants only sell Pepsi products. There aren't really vending machines, but there are general stores and supermarkets everywhere that sell it. Most restaurants sell beverages in plastic bottles, not as fountain drinks. Glasses of water (agua en vaso) is usually free, but it isn't safe to drink outside of the Central Valley. 

Other common beverages are tea (usually te frio) and fruit-flavored sodas. Fanta (orange & grape) is fairly common, but the most common ones are strange flavors that I wasn't brave enough to try, like Apple and Mango. 

General Differences

I have plenty of interesting stories about differences between certain foods as they're prepared in Costa Rica versus American, but I'll summarize a few that are probably most interesting...

In general, Costa Rican food is very plain. They rarely cook with salt, and never with pepper. Hot sauce is always available at restaurants, but most Ticos don't use it even though the food is not spicy at all. 

Pizza is pretty decent there, though the best pizza I had was prepared by Italian ex-pats. It's always thin crust, except at Pizza Hut. The most common toppings for pizzas are mozzarella cheese and ham (not pepperoni, even though they're both pork). The ham is like deli sliced ham you would use on a sandwich. It isn't bad, honestly, but it's a bit weird at first. 

Spaghetti! Topped with soy ham (vegetarian
restaurant) and some cheese that isn't Italian

Tomato-based sauces do taste a bit odd, as you might find them in ketchup or spaghetti. For whatever reason they just taste a bit sweeter and less robust. Spaghetti also frequently has margarine in the sauce, and is sometimes topped with ham. 

Burgers are not bad, but usually really greasy in Costa Rica--and again frequently topped with ham. Other common toppings include mayo, raw onion, and crushed potato chips.