dining

Where should a group of visiting American business students go to acquaint themselves with Panamanian cuisine and pick the brain of a local journalist? In this case they took me out to El Trapiche, and it was a worthy choice.

Via Argentina is the main drag through what was the upper-middle class part of Panama City before such urban design as we have became exclusively for cars. (Let us strip away the snob appeal and understand the meaning of "exclusive." Something or somebody gets excluded. YOU, for example.) Nowadays we get twice per day traffic jams on Via Argentina and El Cangrejo is home to more cars than it was designed to hold, but the cafe where you can hang out on the porch and greet your friends as they walk by nevertheless survives in the neighborhood. Between the afternoon tranque and sunset, there are several places on Via Argentina where you can drink or dine cafe-style and listen to the racket of the area's wild parakeets. Although this is not an all-inclusive listing, the most popular of these places are Manolo's, Del Prado and El Trapiche. All of these places have their strengths, and you can get comida típica at all of them, but among them El Trapiche is the staunchest defender of the national tradition.

So what's Panamanian traditional?

Ceviche mixto, with assorted fresh seafood and not very spicy, for an appetizer. Corvina al ajillo, broiled just right and heavy on the garlic, with rice, a bit of baked plantain and a little salad on the side. One kind of salad dressing --- olive oil and vinegar.

Of course you can order other things, and the people at my table did. The vegetarian got gallo pinto, rice and beans with some tomatoes on top. Others tried the chuletas ahumadas, the sancocho, the seafood platter, the filete and the chicken. Had they wanted something Cuban or Catalan or Basque, they'd have had to go up the street to find it. El Trapiche is interiorano --- and quite good.

El Trapiche, whose decorative centerpiece is a trapiche --- an old manual press used to squeeze the juice out of surgar cane --- is also something of a political hangout. When the Moscoso administration revealed that secret agents El Pintor and Oficial Renco had in their inimitable Gallego fashion uncovered yet another destabilization plot, the alleged ringleader and his prominent friends held forth at a table in El Trapiche and the less-than-alarmed nation snickered along with them.

It was the Panamanian Way.

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El Trapiche
A place to wear your 1% patch?