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Friday, January 13, 2012

Gomier's, Belize

I had a feeling veg food in Central America might be mostly about beans, rice and plantains (these I love, so no real problem).  Our first few meals in Belize seemed to confirm this hunch.



So I was excited to go to Gomier's in Punta Gorda (PG).  Gomier is a characterful, slender Rasta, who runs an all-veg place (used to be pure veg, now includes seafood to appeal to more travellers) and makes his own tofu.  We wandered along Front Street looking at sea and pelicans and trying to find it - it's not hard to find really: on the outskirts of the town centre, by the main road going North, with a view to the Caribbean.  We sat at one of his outside tables, drinking fresh fruit juice (starfruit or orange that day), waiting for the food (it takes a while), watching the world and the sea, and felt at home in Belize.  I had his fried tofu with curry sauce, S had the same with barbecue sauce.  BBQ sauce is usually nasty, but Gomier's was incredibly good - sweet and spicy.  The fried tofu was different from any I'd had before - large pieces, with a very firm texture, and some kind of crispy breadcrumb-like coating - also very good.  Both came with vegetable rice and salad.  It was so good we went back, and the second time I tried his tofu balls - the same tofu but in balls the size of king marbles.  Similarly great, and this was the only place we found in Belize really focused on making veg food (although I heard about a Chinese place in Belmopan).

Not to say we didn't eat well basically all the time - also in PG we had an awesome Belizean breakfast at our guesthouse Nature's Way - prepared by the mother of the family that ran the place - hot ginger tea for me / first real coffee in Belize for Seb, and a plate piled with scrambled eggs, fried plantain, beans, toast, and fresh fruit (papaya, banana and pineapple) - home cooked and tasty as anything.  And Marian's Bayview was good too: faster food and more space than Gomier's; canteen style, good choice, servers behind smoked glass - green beans, some kind of veg, ubiquitous rice, killer hot sauce.

Other highlights were coconut curry (at Habanero's) in Caye Caulker; all kinds of Marie Sharp's hot sauce everywhere; fry jacks; new fruits - Belizean pear (red, pear-shaped but with a stone, tart-sweet and slightly pear-like taste) and Belizean plum (green or yellow and plum shaped; very tart and juicy, with fibrous parts towards the middle - served on the bus in a plastic bag with chili sugar mixed in) and old ones (wonderful pineapple, papaya, watermelon; orange plantations and banana trees everywhere); spicy palm hearts freshly foraged from the rainforest and prepared by a Mayan mama; cacao; tacos from ladies by the lake in Flores...

Pupusa ladies, San Ignacio market, Cayo
We had an especially good food time in San Ignacio: Flayva's, Sweet Ting and Hannah's were good (the first a great spot to hang out).  A place called Martha's was lauded by all the guidebooks, and rightfully so, as we ate dinner and breakfast there and had nothing but great, simple food.  S had a chaya burrito and it blew my mind: chaya (a Mayan green a bit like spinach) cooked with onions, wrapped in a thick flour tortilla and served with a scoop of coconut rice and a plantain.  Also, in San Ignacio market I at last managed to get my paws on a pupusa: they were being rolled by an older lady who didn't speak English, so a younger woman in a long dress and bonnet (her granddaughter?) translated for me.  Beans stuffed in a thick flour bread-pancake, griddled and served piping hot, with hot sauce and pickled cabbage to go on top: finger-scorchingly magnificent.

pupusa!
San Ignacio is very close to the Guatemalan border, so the food there was relatively Hispanic-influenced (as in Flores, obv), whereas PG was kinda Rasta/Caribbean/Garifuna, with lots of Mayans around there too (although not running restaurants, sadly). And Caye Caulker felt like pure Caribbean, with the coconut and curries reminding me of Jamaican food.
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