Such it was today at El Descanso Marinero, a restaurant of whitewashed adobe along the main street through town.
My table and chair were roughly hewn from a large tree and polished smooth. They faced the front of the patio with a natural facade of flowering vines. It gave you that feeling of being inside and outside at the same time. I was the only patron in the place. My goal was ceviche, and several locals had steered me here.
I ordered a bowl for $10, and a side of plantains. They have two kinds of beer in San Cristobal: large and small. I ordered a large.
The beer was cold and the bowl of ceviche was enormous. In Houston, you’d get a cocktail glass with small chunks of fish swimming in a thick sauce of tomatoes, peppers and other distractions. The bowl the server set before me was nothing but a heaping pile of fresh, tangy ceviche – so much that it was hard to pull a piece out without having two or three others tumble over the side.
Every once in a while you have meal where you are able to truly eat as much as you want of something you desperately want. (Before now, the last time it happened to me was at a small restaurant in New Jersey. I ordered a bowl of mussels and they brought me three dozen.)
I’d write more but I’m hungry.
