In this Daily: Food in Costa Rica, Exploring the Country’s Native Ingredients
Tonight, Chef Gilberto Briceño hosts “Native Terroir”, a Pop-Up Dinner focused on the native ingredients that can add some color and flavor to food in Costa Rica. Join him at 6pm this evening in the Beach Club to take a culinary adventure through the country, exploring ingredients found in the wildest, most untouched parts of the country as well as some that can be found right here in town.
In a previous Daily we talked about Chef Briceño’s journey around the world, one that ultimately lead him back to Costa Rica to start Vestigio Creativo and culminated in his arrival in Las Catalinas. Today, we take a look at the vibrant landscape that has brought Chef Briceño so much inspiration, taking a little look at why Costa Rica is such a hotbed for interesting ingredients.
Microclimates and Biodiversity | The Native Ingredients That Inspire Food in Costa Rica
Thanks to its unique topography and positioning -- between the trade wind currents and two separate oceans, Costa Rica has more microclimates per square mile than almost any other country in the world.
There are many groupings of these different ecosystems in Costa Rica, but many experts dividing different environments into twelve main categories -- lowland tropical forest, tropical dry forest, cloud forest, highland mountain rainforest, páramo, semi-deciduous mid-elevation forest, mangrove forest, wetlands, coral reef, carribean coastline, pacific coastline, and shallow seas.
The map above shows almost 30, even excluding the aquatic ecosystems, spread across about 400 discrete sectors.
This is one of the many reasons that Costa Rica is the home to so much biodiversity, hosting almost 6% of the world’s different species of life within about .04% of the world’s landmass. With so many different types of environments, and the countless blends of ecosystems that exist at their borders, it’s no surprise that Costa Rica has given rise to millions of species each uniquely suited to living here.
It’s against this landscape that Chef Briceño works to find new and fascinating ingredients, speaking with locals around the country to discover fruits and vegetables that you would probably never find on supermarket shelves. In many cases, finding these ingredients is like a trip to the past, discovering local histories and meeting the farmers who have cultivated these products for generations.
Tonight, take this trip with Chef Briceño, and have a taste of what the native ingredients of Costa Rica have to offer.