San Juan Food Tour Review
One of our tour guides, Natalie, recently took a trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and found a food tour to be a great introduction to the island’s culture. Here’s here recap of the experience!
Given that neither of us had ever been to Puerto Rico, a food tour was at the top of my list for an introduction to the island in order to make the most of our trip. I signed us up for the Sunset Walk & Taste for our first full day on the island and planned nothing else, knowing that the tour guide would have plenty of recommendations in order to guide the rest of our time in Puerto Rico.
Kayla led a large group of us, 15, on this tour that began at 4 pm and ended between 7-7:30 pm. This left plenty of time for my boyfriend and me to explore the nightlife in San Juan after getting nicely full on this historic and informative tour.
As we walked, talked and ate our way through historic Old San Juan, you could see how much our tour guide, Kayla, loves the place. She lives in Old San Juan itself, having moved there for school after growing up on the west coast of the island.
We walked over to our first taste at Parada Cuesta Blanca Restaurant. There we got to select one of three cocktails to accompany a taste of the popular red snapper in creole sauce, aranitas (one of many preparations of plantains) and a small sample of red beans and rice. I chose the Passion Fruit Sangria and Calvin got the Red Wine Sangria.
Given the amount of red snapper and plantains I ate during the rest of our stay, I was so happy we got introduced to them by Kayla at our first stop on the tour!
After learning more about the history of the city and walking through some beautiful streets…
…We were introduced to a staple in Puerto Rican cuisine, Mofongo.
Being a pescatarian, my mofongo was stuffed with vegetables but everyone else got the chicken. After this taste, I knew I had to get mofongo every chance I got.
Kayla took us through more of the amazing and unique history of the city and island as we navigated the absolutely stunning streets that she is fortunate enough to live within…We got a nice palate cleanser of gelato as our third taste…
I ended up choosing the chocolate and coconut flavors. The gelato was made from local ingredients and was a refreshing treat. YUM.
Our next stop was Club Spritz, Kayla introduced us to the varieties of rum in Puerto Rico and instead of focusing on Bacardi, discussed the other smaller rum distillers in Puerto Rico. Calvin and I ended up searching for the stuff the whole rest of our trip! We got mojitos and paella here as well as a picture in front of the Guinness World Record holder for the smallest house in the world.
This rum is not sold outside of Puerto Rico.
Cafe Negro was our last stop. It was an upscale restaurant and nicely intimate. This dish involved a staple starchy vegetable fritter with blue crab and fried capers. It was lovely. We ended the evening with Puerto Rican Flan, very different from the flan you might think of, this was more cheesecake-like than traditional flan.
By this time, I was nicely full and ready to take a look at some of Kayla’s nightlife recommendations.
This food tour introduced Calvin and me to a place we didn’t know a whole lot about and helped set the stage for the rest of our adventure in Puerto Rico.
THANK YOU KAYLA!