I recently had lunch with a couple of dozen folks at Mi Ranchito, which is about halfway down the Amador Causeway. This is a series of bohios housing a bar and restaurant which, thanks to the opening of the new cruiser port nearby, is one of those lucky small businesses that's profiting from the tourism boom while most Panamanian enterprises are enduring hard times. However, luck is but a minor part of Mi Ranchito's success --- the quality of the food is the more important factor.

I ordered icing glass, the Caribbean seaweed-based beverage with the flavors of the Spice Islands; ceviche de pulpo --- octopus ceviche for those of you who don't know Spanish --- as an appetizer; and corvina al ajillo, accompanied by carimañolas, as the entree. The rest of the party opted for a wide variety of Mi Ranchito's offerings, so I was able to see, if not sample, a good part of their menu.

One of the things that I saw but didn't taste was the way that this restaurant serves clams in their shells. They come in metal bowls with lids, the latter which become a perfect container for the shells. The garlic sauce is thick, and the several people around me who ordered the clams said that Mi Ranchito does them very well.

My own mollusk order, the octopus ceviche, was very good, especially for a Colon boy. It was spicier than the versions found in most Panama City restaurants. Antillean palates are more partial to picante (why do you think they call it "aji chombo"?), while the Panamanian mainstream goes for milder fare. On the Atlantic side the Afro-Caribbean culture is dominant and the ceviche thus tends to be hotter than in the capital or the Interior. (Of course, the West Indian influence is slight in one part of the Atlantic side, Kuna Yala, but the Kunas also go for spicy foods.) Those of you whose natural reaction is "eeew --- octopus" are welcome to be grossed out. That leaves more for me.

Of course, the ceviche was just the appetizer. The corvina came cooked to perfection in a thick garlic sauce with flecks of sweet red peppers, with a little salad and carimañolas --- those fried yucca rolls with a bit of meat in the middle. (Most offerings at Mi Ranchito come with the customer's selection of rice, potatoes, plantain or yucca, with various options for their preparation.) This course was not spicy hot, at least not until I added a few drops of aji chombo sauce to the fish and the carimañolas.

This was a major meal, so I didn't do dessert. For those who ordered differently, the ample portion of flan looked very good.

Those who are visiting Panama for just a day when their cruise ship stops at Amador will get a very good presentation of typical Panamanian fare if they dine at Mi Ranchito. But then, most of the clientele during this lunchtime were not tourists. The crowd was an eclectic mix of locals and visitors, with retirees, couples, boat owners, families, entrepreneurs doing business over lunch, and employees of nearby hotels and the cruiser port patronizing the competition. The English to be overheard was being spoken with American, British and West Indian accents. In one of the little bohios next to the main building the people were speaking German. However, the language heard most often was Spanish, in the Panamanian style.

The Amador Causeway, after a number of false starts, is developing into a worthy tourist draw as well as a crown jewel of the urban park system. Mi Ranchito, which has been there since before the projects got underway, is surely one of the factors in the successful conversion of Fort Amador from a US military base to one of Panama City's nicer neighborhoods.

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