I was quite surprised when I came to narrowing down the best and worst of Bolivia that I actually had more best ofs than worst ofs. This is partly because I am more lenient in the best of category – something has to be really bad to make it to the worst of list – but I think what it really highlights is that the food in Bolivia is not terrible, it is just not terribly exciting.
Many of the meals that didn’t make it to these two posts were perfectly pleasant, but incredibly plain; think unseasoned potatoes, boiled rice, undressed salads, flavourless meats. I have left out the bland and mediocre and narrowed the worst down to ten. Here goes…
10. Sopa de Trigo, Santa Rosa
I am immediately going to contradict myself by saying that the primary problem with this soup was that it was bland. Now I know I just said I wasn’t going to include the pleasant but plain, but this wasn’t even pleasant.
Soups are one thing the Bolivians do really well. I had many in my month there and they were always hearty, based on a rich stock and packed full of vegetables and grain. This, on the otherhand, tasted like salted water with little to no spices and a measly helping of veg.
9. Greasy chook, Potosi
As Tina said when we sat down in this dingy little basement chicken shop
“It’s funny how here we look at a place like this and think it looks alright when back home we’d never in a million years consider eating here.”
You can see for yourself that the hygiene standards leave something to be desired, but what really puts this on the list is the excessive amount of grease coating everything – not just the surfaces but the food as well.
I’d had enough soggy, oily fries in Bolivia – the kind where the oil soaks in but does nothing in the way of crisping – to expect these to be so, but I thought the rice and pasta at least might give some respite from what was an overly greasy quarter of chicken.
The chicken itself wasn’t actually that bad, you could pick off the excessively fatty bits to get at the mostly tender meat, but a greasy piece of chicken needs something less so to accompany it and on this point they failed.
8. Butchered beef, Pampas tour
Generally most of the meals on this trip fit into the pleasant but plain category, as is to be expected when paying a very reasonable price for a tour which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner cooked in a basic jungle kitchen. But this dish actually had the potential to be great which is why it was so sad that they butchered it so entirely.
It should have been succulent pieces of slow cooked beef in a spicy sauce with potato. Instead it was fast and, therefore, overcooked beef – so overcooked you could barely cut it, let alone eat it.
What a pity! The sauce and spuds were so good, but the beef should have been the star of the show.
7. Curries, everywhere
It would be silly to go to Bolivia expecting a good curry. And I didn’t. Indeed I watched my friend, Tina, order several – the first time hopeful, the second time hoping it would be better than the last and after several more giving up.
What then possessed me to not only order a curry – chicken murg masala – but in the same restaurant to order a tom kha soup. A good tom kha is hard enough to come by in London or Sydney! I should have read the warning signals – a restaurant that serves three cuisines is unlikely to be very good at any, but it was called Thai Palace and the waiter looked Thai and I was hopeful that La Paz might be more cosmopolitan than other parts of Bolivia. Wrong.
The soup only resembled tom kha for the addition of coconut milk and sprinkle of coriander, otherwise it was a chicken broth. I didn’t really expect tamarind or galangal – that would be pushing it – but I though a bit of chilli or ginger might have made its way in there.
The chicken murg masala was marginally better but it would have been more aptly named ‘Indian spiced chicken’; the spices were there but it didn’t really taste like a curry.
6. Not so cheesy not quite bread, Sucre
I wish I had a photo of this so you could see why I was so disappointed; it looked so tasty! I had spent a while mulling over all the different pastries at the Mercado Central and after much deliberation I went for what looked like the best of the savouries – a roll of delicious fresh bread filled with melted cheese, herbs and a little tomato. What I got was a lump of barely edible pastry – like a bad shortcrust – so bland and dry that I couldn’t even taste the measly filling. I had about two mouthfuls and gave up. I simply didn’t have enough saliva.
5. Hairy toasties, Wild Rover, La Paz
Sometimes when you are hungover on holiday – which is a lot when staying at the Wild Rover – you just feel like something simple and homely to eat. What would I make myself at home on a Sunday morning with a horrendous hangover? It has to be minimal effort and involve some sort of grease and salt but still be tasty enough to be worth that effort, however small. Ham and cheese toastie it is.
So I ordered a ham and cheese toastie at the Wild Rover. The cheese was not melted and the ham was spam, but it would have been passable if it were not for the hairs. Three of them. Long black curly ones. Certainly not mine.
Usually I am not too fussy about this kind of thing. I had had some chips at the Wild Rover earlier that week with one hair and I pulled it out and ate them regardless, but you have to understand that I was on the verge of spewing anyway and this sent me over the edge.
4. Late night mystery meats, La Paz
I don’t have pictures of this dish either, as I was not really in a state to be thinking about future blogs when I ate it.
After a long night drinking and clubbing I asked my cab driver to take me to the Burger King – bad tourist I know, but I was extremely inebriated and it was the only place I could think of that might be open at 5am. It wasn’t.
“IththereanywhereelthIcangetsothingtoeatnow?” – I am assuming I was slurring when I asked my cab driver where else I might be able to get food.
He took me to a stall by the side of a highway I don’t know where and said to wait in the car because it was not safe for me there. He returned with what is possibly the most disgusting late night snack I have ever eaten: soggy, oily chips with bits of random meats – frankfurter, spam, unidentified offal – covered in sweet tomato sauce, mayonnaise and chilli sauce. YUK!
I was hungry though, so I polished it all off.
3. Cold fried spam, Salar de Uyuni tour
I don’t like spam at the best of times. I don’t know anyone who does. No one on the Uyuni tour that is for sure.
So how would you feel about spam that has been deep fried? It could be improvement, granted, but what if it was then served cold? Cold fried spam.
I don’t think anything more needs to be said.
2. Pique Macho, Tupiza
Valley of the Penises, TupizaPique Macho is a rather strange dish that Bolivians are proud to call their own. Wikipedia describes it thus:
It is a heaped plate consisting of bite-sized pieces of beef, sausage (hot dog type), and french fry-cut potatoes. Added to this mixture are onions, locoto, boiled egg, mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup.
Well if that doesn’t sound like a bad idea to you then I am not quite sure why you are reading this blog.
It is an even worse idea when it is served cold.
Thanks Lonely Planet for that suggestion; the restaurant and the dish.
1. Papas rellenas, Potosí
Papas rellenas can be such a wonderful thing when they are done well; mashed potato stuffed with meat, cheese or egg, deep fried and served with a range of sauces. But the quality – and the fillings – vary wildly and we got a nasty surprise in Potosí. It is a wonder that I was ever willing to try them again; Tina and Adrian certainly weren’t.
The trick is to avoid the ones stuffed with egg, which are inevitably overcooked (twice cooked in fact) and any meat filling when you do not understand the name. We learnt this the hard way; I understood cerdo (pork) but I missed the foot part.
Now I have had pigs’ trotters in fancy fine dining restaurants in Sydney and London and they have been brilliant but they are very very easy to do badly so picking them up in the parking lot behind a bus station is not advisable. I cannot describe how disgusting this bony lump of fat coated in deep fried potato made me feel. It did not help that the skin, which was still very much there and unrendered, was an unhealthy grey colour and still had some hair.
Needless to say, I left it where I found it – in on the sidewalk behind the Potosí bus station.