Puerto Rico: best farm-to-fork restaurants

Brightly coloured doors around San Juan

Julien Capmeil

Puerto Rico’s charismatic cuisine is a convergence of Taíno, Spanish and African influences shaped by colonisation, slavery and successive waves of immigrants. Yet despite the island’s fertile soil and climate, finding first-class domestic produce has traditionally been a major obstacle, due to hurricanes and restrictions created by the Jones Act, which has tied the island largely to US imports since 1920, making homegrown ingredients more expensive and less competitive, and reducing incentives for farmers to scale up their ambitions. “Puerto Rico still imports about 85 per cent of the food it consumes, and even many of our ‘original’ dishes, including rice and beans, come from shipping containers,” says Rosa, explaining that when she started out it was almost impossible to find farmers willing to provide the native pear squash, pumpkin, malanga and yam that define Verde Mesa’s dishes. “I wanted to present a healthier version of Puerto Rico’s cuisine, and source responsible growers who considered crop rotation and soil health. I finally found a farmer who started bringing me some boxes.”

In the years since, island-wide connections between cultivators and restaurants have flourished. Cooperatives have emerged to service an increasing number of places that are now championing an evolving palette of flavours and textures. “Restaurants are still a pretty new concept in Puerto Rico – it’s only been in recent years that chefs have started to take risks and get behind local produce,” says Rosa.

Her restaurant is now one of several pushing the boundaries of Puerto Rican cooking, and earning James Beard award nominations. And this confidence goes beyond fine dining. At La Placita de Santurce, San Juan’s historical food market southeast of Condado Lagoon, karaoke belts out from Toñitos bar even during a passing shower. Taking shelter in La Alcapurria Quemá, I’m greeted with a Palo Viejo rum cocktail by Irvin Roberto Cofresí, who explains how his family-owned fonda, or neighbourhood canteen, is staffed by grandmothers serving up ancestral recipes to a receptive new audience. “The younger generation has the same pride in being Puerto Rican as there used to be in the early 1900s,” he says as plates bearing crab-stuffed alcapurrias – hand-shaped fritters encased by mashed plantain – and pork pasteles pile up. “We’ve always tried to make the best of the hand we’ve been dealt, and we’re more than capable of doing our own thing.”

Going Homegrown in San Juan

Cocina al Fondo

A couple of blocks east of Calle Cerra’s lively after-dark scene, Natalia Vallejo’s neighbourhood restaurant is a homely, unassuming spot disguising very accomplished cooking. The first Puerto Rican chef to win a James Beard award, she channels her rural upbringing into a menu centred around ancestral recipes – sautéed rice with rabbit and plantain, chicken soup with mofongo (a plantain dish) and roasted quail – alongside cocktails rooted in Boricuan flavours (Boricua is the nickname for Puerto Rico) and one of the city’s best wine lists. Those on the pretty outdoor patio are serenaded beneath the stars by a symphony of frogs.

Website: cocinaalfondo.com

La Factoría

A succession of characterful bars have drawn visitors to Calle San Sebastián in Old San Juan for generations. Among them is this low-lit heavyweight of the Caribbean cocktail scene, which has raised the bar for mixology on the island since launching in 2013. A series of distinct spaces are defined by distressed walls, intimate corners and a dance floor. The dulcet tones of Son Cubano set the mood for a finely tuned drinks menu of homemade infusions and shrubs, such as the Champeta, made with a pineapple fermentation that adds clout to barrel-aged rum and ginger. Staff can reveal where the secret candlelit room is.