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Costa Rican Foodways

Regional

Seven provinces and a food culture that is quieter than its neighbours — less chile, more dairy, and a strong sense of the everyday plate. GALLO PINTO at breakfast, rice and beans fried with Salsa Lizano — ⚠ a commercial sauce from 1920 that is now genuinely inseparable from the dish, which is an honest thing to record rather than hide. CASADO at midday: rice, beans, plantain, salad, and a protein, on one plate. OLLA DE CARNE, the beef-and-ground-provisions soup. TAMALES at Christmas, in banana leaf with rice and vegetables in the masa. CHIFRIJO. PATACONES. CHORREADAS, the fresh-maize pancake, in Guanacaste. Tres leches and cajeta. And COFFEE, which built the country: Costa Rica was the first Central American state to grow it commercially and ⚠ BANNED ROBUSTA CULTIVATION ENTIRELY from 1989, a law unique in the world.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Costa Ricans community documented

Languages: Spanish

What is recorded

  • Costa Rica prohibits the cultivation of robusta coffee by law, a measure without parallel elsewhere. documented
  • Costa Rica was the first Central American state to cultivate coffee commercially and has prohibited robusta cultivation by law since 1989, a measure without parallel elsewhere. Salsa Lizano, a commercial product dating from 1920, is documented as integral to contemporary gallo pinto; this is recorded rather than omitted. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Pacific and Highland Nicaraguan Foodways disputed

    ⚠ Nicaragua and Costa Rica both claim gallo pinto. Recorded as a shared Central American rice-and-beans tradition with distinct national forms and no origin assigned.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.