dining

"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"

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Say we have been toiling all morning over a screen at an Internet cafe on Via Veneto --- what then? Where shall we have lunch?

There are many, many options. Does gringo fast food appeal to you? You have McDonalds and Burger King right there. Go the other way up the street to Manolos and you have a whole other set of options, including my candidate for Panama's best sandwich, that establishment's Emparedado Cubano. Walk a little farther in the other direction, turning a couple corners en route, and you get to the banking district's Niko's outlet and another strong contender for Panama's best sandwich, their Gyros. There are many other sandwich possibilities, or Panamanian traditional, or Spanish, or Cuban, or Argentine, or Brazilian, or Mexican, or Catalan, or Italian, or French, or German, or Chinese, or Korean, or Japanese, (etc.) within a few blocks.

But closer at hand, right across the street from the Hotel El Panama, you can get a plate of Chinese dumplings, steamed or fried, with some medium-hot chunky red pepper sauce to go with them, at Fu Yuan.

This is an unpretentious little place, some of whose offerings are on a Chinese language menu that are not included in the English and Spanish versions. Years ago when they first opened, I went there thinking of doing a review and the place didn't meet my standards of cleanliness so I didn't review them. Since then, however, they've gotten their act together on that score. I've long since expunged my reservations from the record.

I'll go easy on the superlatives, but Fu Yuan is a good place to go for a simple plate of dumplings for lunch. Now I occasionally do the burger thing around the corner or across the street, or go to lunch at Manolo's or Niko's. But the odds are also good that you'll find me lunching on dumplings and tea at the Fu Yuan after a morning of grueling labor over a keyboard.

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