Bolivia

I’m going to be honest with this post.

We ate Bolivian a couple of months ago with some friends and a couple of bottles of wine, and I’m having trouble remembering exactly what it was like. This is a lesson in the importance of writing posts at the time of eating. Or not consuming two bottles of wine.

Unfortunately, the lovely but inauspicious restaurant (or late-opening cafe with wine) that we tried Bolivian at does not have a website – a good thing (low overheads equals cheap food and all that) until you need a bit of a memory prompt.

Eeek.

I guess I’m going to have to rely on the few stand-out features that have survived time and alcohol, these being:

Bolivian food comes in generous portions and there’s none of this meat, two vegs and a potato thing that I have come to regard as normal. You get a plate full of meat and carbohydrates, often topped with an egg, and there’s not a lot of anything green. Or at least there wasn’t in the dishes that we ordered.

Bolivia is yet another one of these countries that insists on ruining potentially tasty samosa-type things by coating them in cinnamon or sugar. This is an acquired taste that I am yet to develop. In this case, the pastry/samosa also included yet another egg. Eggs are also something which seem to feature dominantly in Bolivian cuisine.

For those not crazy about sugar-coated chicken, there was a great and surprisingly spicy prawn starter which was stand out. Bolivian food comes in quite surprising combinations, and compared to the main courses, the prawns were brilliantly flavoured and had quite a kick. This variety make a little more sense if you refer to Wikipedia which probably offers far more insight into Bolivian food than I’m able to: “Bolivian cuisine stems mainly from the combination of Spanish cuisine with traditional Indigenous Aymara/Inca ingredients, with later influences from Germans, Italians, Basques, Russians, Poles, and Arabs.”

I have to admit that I missed the Spanish influence but you can’t knock a good plate of meat. If you’re after grilled sausages / chicken / steak / any other type of meat, I’d certainly recommend.

Here’s yet another rousing anthem to finish on. We might end up having to visit El Rincon Quiteno again.

Image: By United States Central Intelligence Agency [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

El Rincon Quiteno