Divisa Travel Guide

This business is on the Pan-American Highway about 10 miles east of Divisa, on the right side of the road if you're going towards Panama City. Like most restaurants in rural areas of Panama, it's open air, with TV's mounted on the walls, a self-service cooler full of soda and beer, and typical solid Panama homestyle cooking, i.e. sancocho soup, varieties of chicken and beef dishes built along the lines of the classic meat-rice-salad triumvirate. Owner and employees were very nice, congenial folks. Owner made a point of coming out and asking how things were, and offered my little boy some penny candies. Place was clean and well kept. We were there at around 10 pm local time, but there was consistent business mainly from truck drivers.

We lived in Japan at the time and were vacationing in Panama visiting my wife's family and friends, so Japan had more or less conditioned us to pay some fairly steep prices for food. The meal for all four of us at this restaurant, complete with soda drinks, candies for the kids, and food left over to carry out, cost me - ready for this - $11.45!!. For four people!! That's just over half what we'd been paying PER PERSON on the average in Japan. Quite the pleasant surprise!!

If there's anything bad I can say, it applies to all restaurants in Panama, so it's not their fault. They use the (in)famous Panama servilleta, a single-fold paper napkin thin enough to read a newspaper through and about as absorbent as British toilet paper. The ketchup on your fingertips from two french fries would need three of these napkins to remove, and your fingers still feel tacky afterwards.

Favorite Dish: I've only eaten here once, in late June 2005, but I can vouch for a majority of the other dishes as when we dine out as a family we sample a bit from each other's plates, and I invariably end up eating what my wife and younger son can't eat on their plates. The carne picada was cooked well, with just the right amount of pepper and onion cooked in with it.