RESTAURANT

 

 

I now know what it’s like to be on a reality TV show, having witnessed the difference between TV reality and, well, reality.

 

My family and I recently took a trip to Panama. It was our second trip there in a decade. 

 

Panama is largely undiscovered — especially compared to Costa Rica, its northern neighbor. Sometimes this means that the hotels are a little more spartan than the typical Pappagayo resort, but overall, Panama feels more authentic, more affordable, and more interesting than the better-developed tourist spots a few hours away.

 

On this trip, we started in Boquete, a small town about 3500 feet above sea level. Boquete’s claim to fame is its coffee plantations. Most coffee experts have concluded that Boquete’s Geisha coffee is one of the top coffees in the world. We visited a local plantation for their famous coffee ice cream, and partook in a massive zip line above another coffee growing farm.

 

We then got a recommendation (admittedly, from ChatGPT) to visit Hacienda Mamecillo, a farm to table restaurant in the mountains outside Boquete. I contacted the owner, Rolando, and we booked a nature hike on the property followed by a seven course dinner prepared by his wife, Gabriella. It was a little pricey ($160 per person), but the food sounded great and a walk in a private 75 acre cloud forest was impossible to decline.

 

Rolando strongly recommended that we use a four wheel drive transport service to get to his house, and noted that he had a trusted vendor that would charge $110 for the round-trip. Initially, this felt a little pricey –– I had been ripped off by taxi drivers in Panama in the past. Reluctantly I agreed.

 

It was a good decision. The restaurant is located about 1500 feet above the town and the farther you drive, the narrower, more muddy, and more disconcerting the trip is. I was glad to have a 4X4 and an experienced driver at the wheel.

 

Rolando gave us the grand tour of the property. We visited numerous greenhouses where he was growing indigenous plants. We toured the hen house, the pig sty, a field of berries, rows of coffee beans, and even a miracle berry plant.

 

 

 

 

After the farm tour, Rolando led us through the cloud forest. The clouds enveloping the land made everything green and moist. Toward the end of the 45 minute hike, we emerged from a clearing to find a 75 foot waterfall roaring down the mountainside.

 

We returned to the house and Gabriella had our dinner ready. The food was beautifully prepared and plated, and most of the ingredients came from the farm or the cloud forest. 

 

One of the most unique items we had was locally called Jambu, a flower that instantly shoots electric-like pulses through your mouth. Definitely an acquired taste.

 

 

 

 

Rappelling for Watercress and Spear-to-Table

 

Toward the end of dinner, Rolando asked if we had seen the National Geographic show about the restaurant. We had not, and I couldn’t tell if Rolando was happy or disappointed. He explained they have a series called Restaurants at the End of the World. As the name suggests, all the restaurants featured require some effort to get to. The host is an accomplished chef (and Top Chef competitor) who travels the globe to find these off-the-beaten path gems. Turns out that Hacienda Mamecillo was the very first episode of the series.

 

When we returned home, I checked out the episode about the Hacienda. From the first minutes of the program, I could see that the producers were taking a lot of creative liberties. The episode opens with Rolando waiting for host Kristin Kish in a field at the base of the cloud forest. Rolando asks, “Are you ready to go to the restaurant?” The host is a bit confused as there is no restaurant in sight. Rolando explains, “we need to take a two mile hike through the forest to get there, so let’s go!” And off they go, climbing the steep hills of the forest until they finally arrive at the restaurant.

 

Of course, I knew this was totally unnecessary, given the $110 I paid for a 4X4 to drive me to the restaurant (and the show later contradicts itself by showing other guests arriving by 4X4). But hey, if you are making a show about restaurants at the end of the world, a two mile hike adds a little remoteness to the episode, right?

 

From there, the fictionalization of the restaurant only got worse. Kristin, Gabriella and Rolando plan the evening’s dinner and decide that two important ingredients are watercress and fish. Remember that waterfall my family hiked to? Well, in the middle of 75 feet of gushing water was a solitary watercress plant. And, of course, there was apparently nowhere else in the entire forest to get watercress (and watercress is vital for a meal . . . said no one ever), so Rolando and Kristin set up rappelling ropes so Kristin can be lowered down the waterfall to pick this lone watercress plant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then there was the fish main course. Now, I’m not sure why a farm to table restaurant located at 5000 feet above sea level and around 100 miles from the ocean would want to center their meal around fish, but that’s what happens in the episode. We see Kristin and Rolando getting equipped with spear guns and free diving in what appears to be a murky and uninhabited section of the Pacific Ocean. Neither seems to know how to use a speargun and no fish are ever seen much less caught. Coming up empty-handed, they decide to use plants from the farm and scrap the fish course. 

 

There’s other moments of fabricated drama that I won’t detail, but suffice to say, the producers worked really hard to turn a nice farm-to-table restaurant at the end of a bumpy road into a Hollywood blockbuster filled with conflict, countdown clocks, and near disasters.

 

I loved our visit to Hacienda Mamecillo. Rolando and Gabriella were wonderful hosts, the food was amazing, and the cloud forest hike was beautiful and memorable. And sure, the watercress and spear-caught sea bass was conspicuously absent from our meal, but we had gotten our adrenaline kick at the zipline a few days earlier anyway. 

 

Maybe a solid organic meal in the cloud forest isn’t enough to satiate National Geographic’s producers, and maybe most viewers expect over-the-top drama from their reality TV episodes. Yes, it would have made terrible reality TV, but simply relaxing next to the Hacienda’s fire pit, sucking on a few Jambu plants, and breathing in the fresh cloud forest air for a few hours was enough for me and my family!