dining

The next generation in El Valle

La Bruschetta, where the elegant details are in the food

by Eric Jackson

Restaurants are a different business in the Interior. Yes, in some places like Coronado there may be sufficient concentrations of affluent people to support an upscale restaurant with all the trappings, but a lot of those fail even in Panama City, and besides, the people with the most money who have houses in the Interior are generally only there on weekends and at those times are not usually disposed to get formal or fancy. For working people wages are lower outside of the metro area, and anyone hoping for that segment of the market has to adjust accordingly.

(Restaurants in or somehow attached to or dependent on resorts that live or die on foreign tourism are distinct. I would even take a step further from the point that Silvio Sirias makes and question whether, in any sort of cultural sense, they are part of the Interior. In any case, I have not yet come across any particularly noteworthy dining establishment in the Interior that has such an exclusively tourist orientation. They serve several cuts above international jail food, with touches of Panamanian culture like the occasional slice of plantain, but think mass produced generic and you get the general idea.)

Indeed, the heart of the Interior restaurant business is arguably not the restaurant at all, but the fonda: the one-cook place, usually a stand with a counter or just a few tables. Yes, there are more standard restaurants, but the fonda is the simple base from which most of them, and an even higher percentage of the good ones arise.

Mario Mato Jr. grew up in the unpretentious restaurant business, as his dad runs Pinocchio's pizzeria in El Valle. Next door to that, the son has opened La Bruschetta, which he proudly proclaims as something of a glorified fonda.

Well, it's a little restaurant with a few tables and a full menu, and it's very good.

This is El Valle, grown touristy and upscale, but still a sleepy little farming center and retirement community. El Valle as in where the mist comes out of the hills even in dry season and the rich volcanic soil grows almost anything. El Valle as in the place where indigenous producers bring the things they grow in their gardens and orchards down to the little market.

El Valle where at La Bruschetta they take advantage of where they are, and subtly flavor and garnish the food with finely chopped fresh green herbs.

My lunch order was simple enough: garlic bread, ceviche de corvina, grilled pork with patacones and a small salad, and lemonade to drink. Across the table my friend ordered langostinos al ajillo with patacones and a small salad, and beer to drink.

The langostinos looked wonderful and I was assured they were, but for someone like me trying to limit the purines they were on the forbidden list.

Was this Interiorano ceviche? It wasn't picante, although I could have used the sauce to make it so. These flecks of green --- culantro? Actually, much milder herbs, barely enough to notice the taste. I think one of them was cilantro.

The garlic bread was substantial, plentiful and good --- lots of butter, lots of bread, sufficient garlic and a garnish of herbs.

The skewer with large hunks of pork separate by squares of green pepper and Spanish onion were perfectly grilled, and seasoned with something that I couldn't quite identify --- that is, so subtly that the meat's flavor was enhanced while the seasoning remained a mystery. The main course was garnished with a dusting of fresh herbs.

La Bruschetta does wonderful patacones, much wider in circumference and thinner than you get almost anywhere else, deep fried very crispy but not at all greasy.

The menu has a rather large selection of salads if that's what you want to do for your meal, but the salads that come with the entrees are suitably small, a slice of olive or two out of the ordinary as to the species of ingredients, but this is El Valle and everything is so fresh.

This is more expensive than the fondas across the street from the market (both La Bruschetta and Pinocchios are up that same street, about halfway to the church) but not much more so. You can feed yourself well and tip the waitress and walk away with change from $10, or order slightly more expensives stuff if you wish.

I expect to be back to La Bruschetta.