Cutting Teeth in

Puerto Rico

Travel by

TasTe

Story by

RobeRt StephenS

Photos by

Zach Stovall

ArepasJOBOS BEACH

Look out. our toughest food critic has just Landed, and her stomach is aLready growLing.

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We turn toward the town of Arecibo, home of the world’s largest radio telescope and a Wendy’s, neither of which we’ll visit today. ∏oo cozy and too familiar. We’ve come to Puerto Rico because Jacqueline is ready to experience life far from our scooters-and-bikes neighborhood and at least slightly beyond the warm hotel pool. Puerto Rico is a logical entry point into the world, partly because the flight was direct and we didn’t have to wait in a customs and immigration line. Mostly, though, it’s because Puerto Ricans love their food, and Jacqueline loves her food. ∏he big question is whether the affection will be mutual.

“Be prepared,” I say. Jacqueline must be con-cerned when I stop in Arecibo’s town square to talk with two police officers on a Kawasaki Mule.

“Excuse me, where can we find some pinchos?”One officer, Jennifer, invites me to sit on the

back of the four-wheeler, which I start to do before realizing we’re going for a drive, with Jacqueline

still in the car, hungry and fatherless. “I’ll follow you,” I say. Jennifer and her partner, Nancy, lead us on a three-mile ride, pausing along the way to hug friends. It’s all very un-cop-like.

“Why are we following those police ladies?” asks Jacqueline, who a few minutes ago would have been just fine with a bag of plantain chips.

“Oh, that’s Nancy and Jennifer,” I say.“But why are we following them?” Kids.“∏hey’re taking us somewhere.” Dads.∏he four-wheeler swings off the road and stops.

Jennifer points at a poor little truck crawling past us. “∏here’s George,” she says. “He’s a little late.”

I watch a 1987 Mazda pickup tow a shed to a spot of dirt, and collapse on its four soft tires. George Marin has served pinchos de pollo from this piece of turf for 20 years. He cleans, cubes and impales them at home before dragging his portable kitchen here, behind the little truck that could.

George opens a window on the shed, allowing

There’s a crumb in the hair of my 11-year-old daughter. It’s a remnant from the pretzels she ate on the plane before we landed in San Juan and started driving west. It will be the last morsel of food Jacqueline recognizes for a while. ∏his is her first foray outside the States, and for the first

47 miles of Puerto Rican road she has been quietly marinating in the scenery and radio music. ∏he inevi-table request finally spills out: “Dad, I’m hungry.” ∏he crumb has fallen. She has no idea what’s coming.

An emergency snack stop in Arecibo introduced Puerto Rico’s most brutally honest food critic to her first taste of an island specialty: pinchos served from the back of George’s trailer.

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PUERTO RICO EATS1. Arecibo: Pinchos2. Isabela: Arepas3. Boqueron:

Empanadillas4. Lares: Ice cream5. Trujillo Alto: Pork6. Piñones: Pasteles

San Juan

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“We had no

food-service

background, but

when my wife

[Diana] saw the

beaches around

Isabela she said, ‘We’re moving here.’ I’m just

glad she saved

her recipes.”

— Hector Vazquez, co-owner of el carey restaurant

the delicious smoke from his grill to waft out. Nine people mill around, willing to wait for George to work some sort of magic on the chunks of chicken.

“He does something different,” says Ramon Gonzales, standing there like a kid at an ice-cream truck, clutching four dollar bills (enough for two pinchos). “Sometimes I come and they’re all gone.”

I order two pinchos for Jacqueline, three for me. As I bite into the caramelized edges, George shows me his jars of garlic powder, onion powder and … I hear a clank in the trash can. Jacqueline has finished her pinchos, and is eyeing mine.

“Can I have that one?” she asks. “Por favor?” I look at Jacqueline’s cheeks, which look like

they’ve been given a pincho noogie. ∏he pretzel is gone. Puerto Rico is now clinging to her face.

i remind jacqueline πo be prepared. none of these stops are tourism-board approved. ∏hey won’t appear on a fifth-grade field trip. We will eat in places best described as shelter. Empanadillas

“∏he other day she found a pumpkin and said, ‘I’ll make pumpkin-coconut soup.’ She’s amazing.”

Hector owned a real-estate title company and Diana was an advertising specialist before they opened El Carey in 2008. “Now our biggest drama,” says Hector, “is walking our sons, Dante [17] and Devan [13], down the beach to school.”

I’m distracted at this point because Jacqueline is licking the fallen parts of an arepa from her card-board tray. ∏he crispy white cornmeal top is gone. ∏he eggs and bacon, doused with Diana’s sweet, spicy, tangy sauce? Adios amigos.

When I tell Hector we’re going to Lares, he shows me an hour-long route on a map. “∏he pret-tiest drive in Puerto Rico,” he says. “By the time you get there, you’ll be ready for ice cream.” At the car I notice that the fruit cup Hector made (soft granola layered between papaya, mango and acai pulp) has been reduced to a smudge on Jacqueline’s sundress.

hecπor was righπ. πhe drive πo lares is amazing. Narrow road. Enormous plants. “Nobody uses Roundup here,” I joke. Silence.

In Lares, we drive up, up, up the main street. I hear a throat clearing and Jacqueline’s soft voice revving up in the back seat. “Dad, I’m …”

What follows will contradict everything her mother and I have preached about nutrition (like last night’s cream-corn pie and guava paste). We’re having ice cream for lunch. We walk into Heladeria Lares. It looks as though the wife of owner Salvador Barreto told him to clean out the attic and this is where he decided to hang everything. Newspaper clippings, posters, business cards. ∏he walls can’t breathe. Mr. Barreto isn’t here, but he has made 50 flavors of ice cream. A young girl, Alisha, stands behind the display case, ready to scoop and answer questions. We’ll have lots of both.

Vanilla, chocolate and even banana transcend borders. But then I see queso . “Cheese?” I ask. Alisha’s grin says, “Oh, yeah, that’s cheese ice cream.”

∏he buffet includes eggnog, carrot, corn, rice and beans, rice pudding, and rice and peas. Because, you know, rice and ice cream go together like …

“Bacalao. What’s that?” “Codfish,” says Alisha. I ask her to repeat herself,

three times. Codfish, codfish, codfish. “Made with natural ingredients,” she adds. So there are actual peas and bits of fish in the tubs. I settle on sea grape, with a dollop of codfish. Jacqueline asks if they have mofongo ice cream. ∏hey don’t. She orders garlic.

Near the doorway a radiant lady in a blue Easter

Smoky kiosks sig-nal that the Puerto Rican version of to-go food is ready. It’s fresh (or “in the moment,” as they say here) and always comes with a conversation.

out of a kiosk in Boqueron. Bacalaitos out of the remains of a kiosk in Piñones. We’ll watch women sweat over deep fryers and men dance behind hot coals. ∏heir pride is contagious. So is their pace.

At El Carey, a breakfast joint near Isabela, a note at the counter is brutally honest: “Sometimes you wait, but everything is homemade.”

∏o Jacqueline’s disappointment, grits are not on the menu. We order arepas (sandwiches made with cornmeal bread), coconut water and fruit cups. And we sit. ∏he owners must be into furniture rescue because the patio is decorated with corner-booth seats (thrown out of a Denny’s perhaps) and plastic porch chairs (the ones I left at the curb last fall?). Surfboards line the support beams and door-ways. Something tickles my arm. It’s a huge clump of cilantro being carried in the arms of a farmer.

“Puerto Ricans love to use cilantro,” says Hector Vazquez, who owns El Carey with his wife, Diana. He squeezes juices from the fruit of the hills. She invents recipes from whatever else is available.

None of these stops will appear on a fifth-grade field trip. We eat in places best described as shelter. But the pride is contagious. So is the pace.

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Casual drives (or paseos) took us to the island’s classic street foods: fish empanadillas in Boqueron, and whatever emerged from the deep fry-ers in Piñones.

Nutritional rules gave way to local customs, like weird ice cream for lunch and big chunks of untrimmed pork cooked up by Eugenio (left) and his son, Saul.

Emotion spills all over Maria Luisa’s corn ice cream. We all hug. I have fish in my teeth. Jacqueline has warm garlic on her breath.

dress grabs my arm and, oozing with joy, starts talk-ing. Her name is Maria Luisa Robles and she is 75. Beyond that, I need her grandchildren to translate. ∏hey’re from Ponce, an hour to the south. ∏hey have planned this day for months. Grandma was married in the church across the street. Moved away in 1960. She dressed for the occasion.

“She wants you to know ‘God put you here today for a reason,’” says a grandson, Armando. Emotion spills all over Maria Luisa’s corn ice cream. We hug. She cries. And then Jacqueline and I walk out, with real fish in my teeth and warm garlic on her breath.

i’ve promised jacqueline a puerπo rican meal that does not involve fried dough or vegeta-bles hiding in desserts. So I text a friend, known on the San Juan streets as Gringo, and ask for a lead.

“I know a place,” he texts. “Must be there by 7.”It’s 6:15 when we pick up Gringo. “Go!” he says.

“Pretend it’s Puerto Rican NASCAR.” He guides us into ∏rujillo Alto, on the fringe of the famed pork highway. It’s another breathtaking ride. Not for the scenery. For the lack of scenery. ∏here are no lights and no stars. We pass through a barrio where patrons are riding horses to the local tavern.

“∏his is why the place where we are going closes so early,” says Gringo. “Darkness.”

∏he long card tables at El Pino are empty, but vintage ∏ito Rodriguez is playing on a jukebox when we arrive. Owner Eugenio Colon, 75, invites us into the kitchen, where slabs of pork sit near a band saw. ∏he floor is slick with grease. Hot pans hold boiled bananas, sweet potatoes and chitlins.

“We eat the whole pig here,” says Gringo. Jacqueline sticks with the rice, peas and pork

that’s literally frosted with crispy skin. “So good,” she mumbles, randomly dropping terms like “ten-der” and “cilantro.” Eugenio takes me downstairs. ∏here, built onto the dirt floor, he shows me 11 roasting pits. He’s put the pigs on the poles for 57 years (and will tonight when we leave). “Pork is community,” says Eugenio. “It brings us together.”

Eugenio then shares his secret for the best meat: “Pigs in the hills are fatter. When they’re fat, they’re loved. When they’re loved, they’re sweet and juicy.”

Upstairs, Saul has cleaned all but one spot, the one where Jacqueline is hovering over the last few bites of sweet, juicy meat. She finally looks up from her plastic foam plate and says three words that sum up her new-world experiment: “Dad, I’m full.”

I don’t mention the tiny piece of lovable pork skin that’s stuck to her chin. leSSonS leaRneD: p. 74