Rincón Antigüeño
Tuesday, December 12
In the city center of Antigua there are many restaurants serving a variety of international cuisines, such as Arabic food, Vietnamese Pho, classic French cuisine and there are also some US-American fast food chains. Because Christoph and I were in Guatemala for the first time ever of course we wanted to try the local Guatemalan cuisine first.
This plan turned out to be more difficult than we thought, as there were only a few restaurants in Antigua that served traditional Guatemalan food. After being surprised at first, we then understood that most Guatemalan families cooked the traditional local food themselves at home and that there was apparently not enough demand for traditional Guatemalan restaurants in the city.
If you google it, the only place that everyone recommends is the restaurant "Rincon Antigueño" in the center of the city. They don’t do reservations, so you just drop by spontaneously and stand in the usually quite long queue. The restaurant's dining room is located in a beautiful, open courtyard. A small, narrow corridor leads there from the street. While you wait in line in that narrow corridor, you can watch the cooks preparing fresh corn tortillas for the restaurant on a traditional oven that is called "comal". At lunchtime, Rincon Antigueño is always very busy and overall the atmosphere is quite hectic. The staff are friendly, but it becomes clear that you should leave the table as quickly as possible after finished eating. The menu is quite small and is printed out in large letters next to the cash register. You order directly at the counter, where you also pay immediately. The restaurant is a mixture of canteen and restaurant, which is also reflected in the low prices. We ordered a traditional Guatemalan stew "Hilacha", which consisted of vegetables, potatoes and beef. As a side dish, there was a big portion of rice and, of course, a basket filled with freshly baked corn tortillas. The food was very good and well seasoned, but the basket full of corn tortillas was way too much food for us. Overall, the Rincon Antigueño is a good place to try typical Guatemalan food. After a month in Guatemala, however, we have to say that Guatemalan cuisine is not quite as varied as other country’s cuisines in Latin America.
