How Panama’s Culinary Scene Became the Envy of Central America

In 2010, when Maito opened in a restored wooden house in the San Francisco neighborhood — at the time a mostly residential zone — Mario Castrellón was alone. The restaurant was serving dishes and ingredients picked up from cultural groups in the country, like dumplings from the Barrio Chino, banana-leaf-wrapped Afro-Antillean seafood stew-filled tamales, and concolón, the crispy rice at the bottom of your grandmother’s pan. “Diners still wanted international classics like risotto, and big plates with lots of rice,” Castrellón explains. “It was a slow and steady process.”

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Nicholas Gill / New Worlder