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Last night Mayra and I had dinner in the new, very elegant ‘Andiamo La’ Italian restaurant located beside Más Por Menos en Santa Ana (on the road to the Cruz Roja) ….
It looks more like a restaurant you’d find in New York City than Santa Ana, Costa Rica but we had a great night!
Everything was superb!
We shared a breaded calamari starter (4,390) which was excellent. Mayra had a spaghetti dish with lobster tails (250 grams) for 10,162 and I had a good sized, perfectly cooked lomito in a gorgonzola sauce (10,500) which was simple awesome. The quality of the meat was excellent, the service was excellent and for dessert we shared a Tarta de cholcolate… (3,211)
My only negative comment would be that the wine list is a little on the pricey side … We enjoyed a bottle of Chilean Carmenere for 18,292 which was one of the cheapest bottles.
At c57,299.87 (US$115) for the two of us, this certainly isn’t [i]comida tipica[/i] but we can’t wait to go back …
[quote=”Scott”]Last night Mayra and I had dinner in the new, very elegant ‘Andiamo La’ Italian restaurant located beside Más Por Menos en Santa Ana (on the road to the Cruz Roja) …
At c57,299.87 (US$115) for the two of us, this certainly isn’t [i]comida tipica[/i] but we can’t wait to go back …
[/quote]$115 is more that one-tenth of my social security. A good reason to leave Costa Rica. Not cheap at all. Insanity if one is retiring to CR thinking it is a cheap place to live.
[quote=”barbaracjohnson”
$115 is more that one-tenth of my social security. A good reason to leave Costa Rica. Not cheap at all. [/quote]C’mon now, Barbara. One person’s unfettered extravagance is hardly cause to abandon the whole country. $115 is more than I’d spend, too, but it doesn’t make me pack up and leave.
Can Scott or anyone else recommend a GOOD restaurant in the vicinity of Parque La Sabana? (preferably less than $115 for two)
PEHPark Café is most definitely an excellent restaurant.
[ http://parkcafecostarica.blogspot.com/ ]
The photograph below is of the delicious double lamb chops at Park Café…. Que hijo de p…a rico!
You MUST call to make sure they’re open though, they tend to open when they feel like it …
Enjoy!
[quote=”barbaracjohnson”]$115 is more that one-tenth of my social security. A good reason to leave Costa Rica. Not cheap at all. Insanity if one is retiring to CR thinking it is a cheap place to live.[/quote]
I did NOT suggest for a second it was a “cheap” restaurant Barbara ….
The fact that I mentioned that: “It looks more like a restaurant you’d find in New York City than Santa Ana, Costa Rica… ” Would give most people a clue that you don’t go there to order [i]gallo pinto[/i] and maybe, it’s a place for special occasions like birthdays, wedding anniversaries or in my case Fridays…. 😀
I am not living on Social Security and thankfully $115 is less than one percent of my monthly income so I don’t worry about splashing out once in a while but this brings up an interesting point again about perspectives….
When I lived in Cayman 12 years ago, I would have spent this on a lunch for two without a bottle of wine, I don’t want to imagine what it would cost today… In Cayman I was spending $400-$500 per month on water, same for cellphone…
The last time I was in London, I would have probably had to pay $350 for a similar meal …
As for the quality of food, the service and the overall ambience, ‘Andiamo La’ could indeed compete with the best Italian restaurants in New York (and yes! I lived there for just over ten years too) but, I guarantee you the price in NYC would have been 3-4 times as much …
And as for “insanity”? If one was to consider living in the U.S. would you first look at the prices of the finest, most expensive restaurants in Manhattan and make your decision based on that? Of course not ….
Scott
$115 for a great dinner for two is a FRACTION of what you would pay for a similar meal in LA, NYC, London or Paris. when we had restaurants in the 90’s, it used to cost $50 a person to eat there, and that was without tax and tip. fine dining is expensive, no matter where you go. if i weren’t married to an italian chef, who was praised by Julia Child when she ate in our restaurant, i would make him take me there!!!! but i think i will just tell him to get into the kitchen and work some magic.
I don’t even go to El Pollo Loco here in Tustin California. I can cook chicken better. Because of my diet, which is to say I have a fragile stomach that produces way too much acid, I keep it simple. Jasmine rice, beans, chayote squash or green beans, chicken or tilapia, salmon on special occasions, hardly any red meats, let alone filet mignon! I do go to Costco for salmon and angus beef patties. I make superior burgers to any restaurant!
So I think I can adapt to the Costa Rican diet!:D[quote=”johnnyh”]I don’t even go to El Pollo Loco here in Tustin California. I can cook chicken better. Because of my diet, which is to say I have a fragile stomach that produces way too much acid, I keep it simple. Jasmine rice, beans, chayote squash or green beans, chicken or tilapia, salmon on special occasions, hardly any red meats, let alone filet mignon! I do go to Costco for salmon and angus beef patties. I make superior burgers to any restaurant!
So I think I can adapt to the Costa Rican diet!:D[/quote]Scott that a nice place for rich people like you :D:D:D
[quote=”DavidCMurray”][quote=”barbaracjohnson”
$115 is more that one-tenth of my social security. A good reason to leave Costa Rica. Not cheap at all. [/quote]C’mon now, Barbara. One person’s unfettered extravagance is hardly cause to abandon the whole country. $115 is more than I’d spend, too, but it doesn’t make me pack up and leave.
[/quote]to splurge occasionally is nice and happens all over world. We normally do not eat at the pricey places near us, normally going for under $40-50, but nice on occasion….
[quote=”johnnyh”]I don’t even go to El Pollo Loco here in Tustin California. I can cook chicken better. Because of my diet, which is to say I have a fragile stomach that produces way too much acid, I keep it simple. Jasmine rice, beans, chayote squash or green beans, chicken or tilapia, salmon on special occasions, hardly any red meats, let alone filet mignon! I do go to Costco for salmon and angus beef patties. I make superior burgers to any restaurant!
So I think I can adapt to the Costa Rican diet!:D[/quote]I noticed that if one likes rice, beans, occ some Pollo and seafood and lots of fresh veggies and fruits, CR is for you…hate rice? beans? then likely, traditional CR cooking is out……We ate good, esp when going local…….great, now that organic salad I ate for lunch, not sounding near as good as the huge plate I ate Wed when I was in CR…..heaping rice, beans, Pollo, Carne…:D
[quote=”maravilla”]$115 for a great dinner for two is a FRACTION of what you would pay for a similar meal in LA, NYC, London or Paris. when we had restaurants in the 90’s, it used to cost $50 a person to eat there, and that was without tax and tip. fine dining is expensive, no matter where you go. if i weren’t married to an italian chef, who was praised by Julia Child when she ate in our restaurant, i would make him take me there!!!! but i think i will just tell him to get into the kitchen and work some magic.[/quote]
Where did you have your buisness(s)? Did you serve Ethiopian too?
[quote=”Scott”], they tend to open when they feel like it …
[/quote]
:lol::lol:
Pura Vida-no worries!! 😀
that would blow the minds of most Londoners or Americans…..I remember as a kid of 9 or 10 years of age my parents would send me to live in San Jose with one of my aunts, and she was a vegetarian and also a yoga practitioner, if you can call it that, as she would sleep on the floor. Her house was in Cuesta de Moras, just opposite the Museo Nacinal fort. She had weird stuff on the wall and all of us including my cousins would have to pray to these icons. Meals mostly consisted of rice and beans and lentils,and salads with tomato and avocados, and I would make a little volcano of the rice where I would put the egg. Her husband was a judge in Puerto Limon, and he went along with all of her quirks. He reminded me of that British actor Alec Guinness.
I do like spaghetti and meatballs though!no, we did not do ethiopian food (which i love by the way, if only i could get teff here !). we had Italian fine-dining restaurants, where every single thing was made from scratch — even in the 90’s it was expensive to do that and then chemicalized, industrialized corporate food took over. people like cheap, and cheap is what they got at every restaurant but ours. so really, the prices scott quoted are NOT expensive if you want to eat well prepared FRESH food, and not some glop out of a 5 gallon bucket that the food service companies supply to most restaurants. you get what you pay for.
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