Sancocho
“Sancocho?”
“No sancocho,” Lydia replied. “Sancocho está agotoda.”
“Sold out? No!”
“Si. Agotoda.”
“Sancocho el lunes proximo?”
“Si. Proximo. Next Moanday.” She said it with a big forward hopping gesture of her arm.
Sancocho is something between a stew and a sopa (soup). Usually it has chunks of biftec (beef steak), sometimes corn sometimes still on the cob, potato, sometimes sweet potato all in a thick broth. It’s wonderful.
But at El Rincon, a little familaria on Carr. 110, sancocho is the lunch special on Mondays. That’s the only time they make it and when it’s gone, it’s gone. It was our bad luck to come in just after Lydia served the last bowls of this week’s sancocho to three hombres. We waited eight months for this.
I don’t know if it was some cosmic karma – after all, they live here and can get sancocho every week – but their big red pick up truck, parked next to us in the sloping parking lot, had a flat rear tire.
We ate lunch at El Rincon anyway. I had a very tender biftec con arroz blanco y cebollo (onion). Elaine had a wonderful lasagna con pollo. Chicken is not something we usually think of in lasagna but it was delicious. With salads for both of us and sodas to drink, our whole bill was about $11.
We did go back on Monday. I had sancocho. But Elaine was so impressed with the lasagna con pollo she had that again.
Tags: eat local, Puerto Rico, Travel
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