dining

Panama's Chinese community is more than 150 years old, and though part of Panama City's hardscrabble Salsipuedes neighborhood is officially designated as the Barrio Chino --- and will act accordingly with pyrotechnics and dragon dancing to observe the upcoming Chinese New Year --- El Dorado is fast becoming the capital's upscale new Chinatown. You can see it, for example, in auto dealerships on Tumba Muerto that have signs in Chinese that are translated into neither Spanish nor English. Some Chinese friends of mine, having noted my tendencies toward culinary sinophilia, have advised me that I really need to check out some of the new eateries in the area.

I have started to do so, and will continue the exploration.

This lunchtime adventure took me to La Reina, Casa del Hampao. It's a tiny, unpretentious place just downstairs and around the corner from the Super 99 that does a lot of fast food --- hampao dumplings of course, and hsiu mai, Chinese omelets, roast chicken and pork and rice balls were all ready to go --- but I sat down and ordered some Singapore noodles and a pot of tea.

The service was prompt, but for what I ordered not instantaneous. In other words, they didn't have a bunch of fried rice noodles and the other ingredients waiting in a chafing dish, to be thrown together and microwaved. Surely there was food prep work involved beforehand, but they took my order and stir-fried my lunch in a wok while I waited.

I have never been to Singapore, but I am familiar with Straits Chinese cuisine. There is a lot of it available in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for example, and as I lived in nearby Ypsilanti --- the slums of Ann Arbor --- for many years, and worked on an Ann Arbor monthly just around the corner from a really good Straits Chinese-style eatery for a time. Singapore-style noodles come spiced with curry.

At the Casa de Hampoa you can add the curry sauce if you want, but the fare is spiced down for Panamanian --- and Chinese-Panamanian --- preferences. So if I wanted to get obnoxious about "authenticity" I could.

But why would I want to do that? The ingredients were fresh, the preparation was perfect, the taste was great. I have a bunch of other places to check out in the area, but sooner or later I'll be back to the Casa del Hampoa to do lunch again.

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