From brightly coloured trucks plating up gourmet burgers to roadside stands serving speciality sandwiches, Puerto Rico’s street-food scene is unmatched. Here’s where to head when you’re hungry for snacks.
01 September, 2022
In partnership with
Puerto
Rico is a haven for street-food stands:
whether it’s a family roadside joint making hot-from-the-pan
jibaritos (fried beef and plantain sandwiches) or a canary-yellow
truck rolling out gourmet burgers in the urban centre, there’s a
wealth of on-the-go snacks to sample. Don’t pass them up.
Exploration of these casual kitchens is all part of the fun, and
the best way to find some of the tastiest bites on the island.
A quick-fix spot to grab lunch on the island, left, and a
roadside fruit stall. | Photo credit: Jacob Elwood
Head to the island’s east coast for the El Yunque Food Truck
Family Park, and arrive hungry because Néctar feeds its patrons
well. Dishes are more artfully crafted than you might expect from a
food truck, and the menu – which has a bit of a surf ‘n’ turf angle
– ranges from rice bowls with smoked meat, spicy crab and avocado,
to tamarind pork belly topped with tempura shrimp. If it’s at all
possible, save room for dessert – the likes of tres leches (milk
cake) or churros filled with bavarian cream.
There are plenty of hot-dog stands around Puerto Rico, but
Puruko, perched outside the Rebekah Colberg Sports Complex, is
worth making a beeline for. Work up an appetite at the skatepark or
batting cages first… or just show up for lunch. Go for a classic or
Polish sausage, then have it fully loaded – topped with sauerkraut,
condiments and a flourish of crunchy potato sticks.
Ask any local for a must-stop food stand and you’ll keep hearing
the name El Churry. An early adopter of the food-truck trend, these
guys have been cracking out incredible meat sandwiches since the
late 90s, with soft Puerto Rican pan sobao bread filled with your
choice of beef or chicken, sauces and crisps. Today, there are a
handful of these green-and-red trucks across the island, including
in Isla Verde and Guaynabo.
The daily special from SaVor, left, and diners at Santurce’s
food park, Lote 23. | Photo credit: Joe Howard
Vegans, fear not: there are delicacies for you here, too. SaVor
dishes up animal-free fare at the vibrant Miramar Food Truck Park –
and the offerings are excellent. While the menu changes each week,
you can expect flavourful dishes such as pumpkin “chop” with
rosemary and pigeon-pea risotto, yautía blanca (a starchy, sweet
potato-like vegetable) gnocchi with mushroom sauce, and a trio of
black-bean sliders.
Head to the beaches at Playa Fortuna and you’ll find the Kioskos
de Luquillo, a string of stalls selling all kinds of food and
souvenirs. (Don’t let their weathered appearance deceive you:
there’s fantastic food to be had here.) The Ceviche Hut delivers a
delicious taste of Peru, with fresh local fish cured in zingy
citrus and a kick of chilli that can only be further improved by
the accompaniment of a cold pisco sour.
Santurce’s popular gastronomic park Lote 23 hosts a wide variety
of vendors, selling everything from craft cocktails to fried
chicken. But you’d be very wise indeed to visit El Cuchifrito for a
generous and customisable portion of mofongo – the island’s
traditional root-veg mash. Choose from a base of plantain, yucca or
sweet potato (or, if you’re feeling brazen, go for a combination of
all three), then add your choice of toppings from a line-up that
includes succulent pork, garlicky shrimp and a rainbow of seasonal
produce.
A colourful bowl of food from El Cuchifrito, left, and a
beachfront coconut seller. | Photo credit: Joe Howard
In the mountains of Cayey, you’ll find a cluster of kiosks
preparing lechón (slow-cooked, spit-roast pig), a much-loved Puerto
Rico tradition that has seen the approach road dubbed “the pork
highway”. Each vendor serves up pork and all the trimmings so good
you really can’t go wrong, but if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the
choice, start the ball rolling at Los Pinos, whose combination
(mixed cuts) plate had the late Anthony Bourdain in raptures.
This long-running gem at the Con-Tenedores Food Truck Park
celebrates all things plantain, from soups and salads to the
burger-like crispy plantain sandwiches. What many patrons keep
coming back for, though, is the mamposturrias – La Mancha de
Plátano’s own take on traditional alcapurrias. These plantain
cigars are stuffed with delights like rabbit fricassee or smoked
honey and chimichurri, then fried until golden.
If you’re harbouring a sweet tooth or just fancy a little
refresher on a hot Puerto Rican day, stop by Limbers in Old San
Juan. The hole-in-the-wall stand has been selling shaved ice here
for more than 50 years, making it a little serving of local
heritage. Around £1 gets you a paper cup with your choice of
flavour, be it classic lemon or something more tropical, like
guava, pineapple or passion fruit. Just make sure to eat it before
it melts.
Ready to embark on a street food-fuelled road trip? Visit
discoverpuertorico.com to start planning your
island adventure.
