Dining at the Templarios

The Middle Ages were when, as one of the beneficial side-effects of the series of bloody catastrophic acts of religious fanaticism collectively known as The Crusades, the Europeans acquired a taste for exotic products like pepper, ginger, coffee and tea. It revolutionized European cuisine, but not nearly so much as the conquest of the Americas and all of their unique agricultural riches and the colonization of Africa and the Orient that ensured Western control of spices and foods that had previously only been available through Levantine intermediaries.

(Think of Italian food without tomatoes or noodles --- things they got from the Peruvian and Chinese cultures respectively --- or an Irish diet without potatoes, to get some idea of the Medieval European diet. Lots of split pea soup and bread, beer or wine according to region and economic means, meat or fish flavored mostly just with salt, but after the Crusades, maybe with pepper too.)

Back in those days, they also didn't have much in the way of health inspection either. Of course, kings had dogs, servants and/or rival princes to test foods for poison, but organizations like the Health Ministry hadn't been invented.

So when the Restaurante Templarios, which is located just around the corner from the Balboa YMCA, in a locale on the way to the Amador Causeway and the Bridge of the Americas once occupied by Domino's Pizza, and years before that by a hobby shop, bills its cuisine as "Medieval," there is a certain inescapable lack of authenticity. They don't have a downstairs dungeon guarded by a sinister midget where the torture never stops. They do have to pass health inspections. You don't run much risk of contracting the Black Plague by patronizing the establishment. You do get served food that has been prepared with equipment that didn't exist in the Middle Ages. The meat is not from animals that have been baited or otherwise tormented before slaughter. The food is fresher than it tended to be in the days of old when knights were bold and refrigeration wasn't invented.

But let me not quibble. This restaurant is a good place to go for lunch or dinner and wine. They do a good paella and a decent selection of seafood, poultry and meats. The grossest-looking thing they do, the squid in a creamy sauce that gets a metallic gray color from the inclusion of the squid's ink, is actually quite tasty.

Do not go to the Templarios expecting to eat a roast quail with a knife and your fingers, and to top off the evening's entertainment by grabbing a servant girl. But if you are a politician, you might enjoy the good food and quiet retro-Medieval ambience after a long day of pillaging.

This restaurant is in a difficult location, given the decline of Balboa and Amador as residential areas. On the other hand, it's convenient for travelers just getting off of or planning to get onto the Bridge of the Americas and the location is right for lunch crowds from the Panama Canal Authority and Florida State University - Panama.

But even if it's a little out of your way, it's worth the extra effort to dine at the Templarios.

dining

Hmmm --- it can't be ENTIRELY medieval