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Haute Salsa
By Lora Bodmer
Photo courtesy of Rip Jack Inn
Almost delirious with hunger after a full day chasing waves on Playa Avellana, I hardly blink when I see an 800-pound pig wading out of the water. Lost in a bacon reverie, I follow the swine up the beach to a palm-shaded pochote-wood table at Lola’s, the sow’s namesake home and source of some of the best new food on Costa Rica’s Pacific-side Nicoya Peninsula. Despite the porcine host, this is no hole-in-the-jungle dive. Rupert Murdoch’s personal chef, Jeb Burke, is in the process of establishing a bona fide fine-dining establishment with an Asian-influenced menu of fresh fish and local organic produce (try the grilled mahi-mahi in a ginger-miso glaze served over tamarind rice noodles) next to the unassuming bar.
Lola’s is just one of dozens of new high-end eateries cropping up in surf-centric Costa Rica as American and Canadian chefs are lured south by the record number of tourists pouring into the country. At last, this jungle paradise is gaining a culinary scene to match its surfing and other outdoor allures. Case in point: Etcetera, a hot, one-year-old seafood restaurant that Canadian owner and chef Derek Furlani started after leaving Santa Ana, California’s acclaimed Green Parrot Cafe.
And at Playa Grande, a world-renowned surf break 25 miles north of Playa Avellana, I discovered Upstairs @ the Rip-Jack Inn. Executive chef Jim Spratling, of South Carolina’s famed Saltus River Grill, heads south a few times each year for oceanic and culinary inspiration. He serves up what he calls “nuevo tico,” Costa Rican favorites refashioned with exotic flavor infusions, like dorado in a ponzu reduction and jumbo shrimp with fresh pineapple relish and cilantro pesto. “American cuisine is striving to return to the sensibility that prevails in Costa Rica,” says Spratling. “Everything there is local.”
Everything, that is, except the chefs.
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