Eating in Old San Juan: Mofongo, the Piña Colada Argument, and What a Food Tour Is Worth

Puerto Rican food is not Mexican food, it is not Cuban food, and the differences matter enough that ordering confidently on the first evening is most of the pleasure. The short version: this is a Spanish–West African–Taíno kitchen built on plantain, pork, rice and sofrito, and almost none of it is spicy-hot.

Sixteen food tours run from here, from €39.16, with a median price of €78.66. Whether one is worth booking depends entirely on which kind it is, and they are not the same product.

Mofongo is a base, not a dish

This is the thing to understand before you read a menu.

Green plantain – starchy, not sweet, closer to a potato than to a banana – is fried, then pounded in a wooden mortar called a pilón with garlic, olive oil and usually chicharrón, fried pork crackling. What comes out is dense, savoury and faintly smoky, and it is shaped into a dome.

Then you choose what goes with it or in it: shrimp in creole sauce, stewed chicken, octopus, sometimes nothing at all. “Mofongo” on its own tells you the starch, not the meal. Mofongo relleno is the version hollowed out and filled.

Its close relative trifongo adds sweet plantain and cassava to the same pounding, and is softer. If the first mofongo you try is heavy, the problem may be that you needed the second one.

Two bars, one cocktail, one long argument

The piña colada was declared the official drink of Puerto Rico in 1978, and there are two places in this city that will tell you they invented it.

The Caribe Hilton says its bartender Ramón “Monchito” Marrero created it there and first served it on 15 August 1954, after months of trying to get the pineapple, coconut and rum to hold together in one glass. Barrachina, in the old town on Calle Fortaleza, credits Ramón Portas Mingot with the drink in 1963, and has the plaque on the wall to say so.

Both plaques are real. The most common reconciliation is that the drink was mixed at the Hilton and got its name and its fame later, downtown. Nobody is going to settle it, and the correct response as a visitor is to try both and take a side, which is what everybody here does.

One practical note: the version worth drinking is made with fresh pineapple and cream of coconut and takes a few minutes. If it arrives instantly from a slush machine, that is a different drink with the same name.

The rum, and where it actually is

Casa Bacardí is the third most-reviewed offer on this site, behind the rainforest tour and the Culebra boat trip – the distillery tour runs €39.16 with 4.7 stars from 1,617 reviews, and at 45 to 92 minutes it is the shortest big-name experience on this site.

The thing nobody mentions in the listing: it is not in Old San Juan. It sits across the bay in Cataño, and you are looking back at the old town skyline from the other side. Check what your booking includes in the way of transport, because getting there is the whole logistical question.

Ron del Barrilito in Bayamón is the other one, with 317 reviews, and it is the smaller, older, more agricultural visit of the two. Bacardí is a global brand that happens to be here. Barrilito is a Puerto Rican house that never became one. If you have time for one distillery and you already know what Bacardí tastes like, this is the more interesting hour.

Is the €149 tasting walk worth it?

The Old Town foodie walking tour is the flagship: three hours, 4.9 stars from 723 reviews – the highest rating of anything in the top twenty here – at €149.25 per person.

That is a lot of money, and it is nearly four times the starting price of this category. It is worth being clear about what you are buying, because two people can look at the same booking and both be right.

What you get: a guided circuit of the old town with tastings at several places, someone explaining what is on the plate, and reservations you did not have to make in a district where the good small places fill up. For two people that is roughly €300, which in a city of this price level is a real dinner budget spent on lunch.

When it is worth it: first trip, short stay, and you want the map of the cuisine before you spend four more evenings ordering on your own. The tastings are the syllabus, not the meal.

When it is not: if you are a confident traveller who is happy to walk into a place with no English menu and point. You will eat as well for a third of the price, and you will find your own favourite, which is better than being shown one.

The 4.9 rating says the tour is very good at what it does. It does not say it is the cheapest way to eat well here, and it is not.

Beyond the old town walls

Old San Juan is seven blocks and it is not where the city eats.

Piñones, twenty minutes east along the coast in Loíza, is a line of open-sided kiosks in the sea grape trees selling alcapurrias, bacalaítos and fried things on sticks. It is Afro-Puerto Rican cooking, it is cash-friendly, and it is the cheapest good food anywhere near this city.

La Placita de Santurce is a produce market by day that becomes an outdoor drinking and eating district at night, especially Thursday to Saturday. It connects naturally with the 14 salsa and nightlife offers from €24.58, because it is the same evening.

Guavate, up in the hills at Cayey, is the lechón road: a run of open-air roasteries turning whole pigs on spits, busiest on Sundays. It is the most serious eating on the island and it needs a car or a tour, because it is an hour inland and nobody is walking home from it.

Two things to know before the first meal

Tipping is American, because this is the United States. Fifteen to twenty per cent, and check whether service has already been added for larger groups.

Lunch is the bigger meal in a lot of local places, and some of the best of them close in the late afternoon. Plan the ambitious plate for the middle of the day and the piña colada argument for the evening.

Afterwards, the 45 Old San Juan walking tours from €19.09 cover the same streets without the eating, and our guide to walking the old town explains why the cobbles are blue.