dining

It’s the restaurant at one of the many cheap hotels that you find between Avenida Central and Avenida Balboa, in this case on Calle 29, between Avenida Peru and Avenida Cuba. It’s around the block from the Hotel Savoy, if you navigate by landmarks as most Panamanians do. I didn’t stay at the Hotel Covadonga, but I did dine at its restaurant, the Restaurante Covadonga, a clean little place with simple decor and the colors of the Colombian flag on its cooler.

Here you get an international menu with Panamanian, Colombian, Spanish, Greek and Italian accents at modest prices. If you want to spend $25 on your entree and they have a lobster that size on that day, you can do so. If you want to spend just under half of that, some of the more expensive langostino offerings are in that price range. Mostly, however, the entrees are in the five to eight dollar range. The service is prompt but not instantaneous --- you don’t get microwave or chafing table food here.

I had walked more than my usual few miles on this day and had this little throb in my foot, so I passed up the temptation to try a Colombian variant of ceviche de pulpo at the risk of an all-out gout attack. I did not, however, eat as healthy and risk-free as the menu would have let me do. Dinner on this evening was some garlic toast for starters, with corvina a la vasca as the main event, french fries and salad on the side, lemonade to drink and flan for dessert. At my table, the young man to my right ordered a Greek salad to start, then some braised langostinos with patacones on the side and Coca-Cola to drink. The man across from me began with a sopa de mariscos, and proceeded to lobster in the house style with rice and salad on the side, milk to drink and a strong cup of coffee afterwards.

My main course was delightful. Whether you call it “Spanish regional” or not is a matter of ideology --- “a la vasca” means “Basque-style.” It was an ample corvina filet, slightly coated but not enough to really be called breaded, fried (I believe in a pan rather than a deep fryer) or possibly grilled until brown and crispy outside and just right inside, then covered with shrimp, clams and a mildly spiced creamy sauce. All the rest of my meal was good too. My compliments to the chef.

At the Restaurante Covadonga we have yet another example of a genre that many Panama City residents unfortunately ignore --- hotel restaurant food. You usually don’t have to stay at a hotel to dine there, and the best in-house restaurants aren’t necessarily found in the ritziest hotels.

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