Saturday night at la lechonera

This is the star of la lechonera: roasted suckling pig

When you take Guavate exit from highway 52 and follow road 184 down towards Patillas, after a few miles you'll come to a place where several lechoneras are operating side by side serving whole roasted pig, like at the picture above.

All those places are - as the locals tell me - most crowded on sunday afternoons, when carloads and busloads of hungry people descent on them.

We = some of the people from Eye on the Rainforest, 3T , Andres, Ursula, Steven and I went there on Suaturday evening. There was a crowd, blaring music and plenty of food, though ordering had to be done by pointing, due to the noise.

I forgot the name of the one my local friends unanimously declared the best of them all, but it is easy to find, as it is located on the right hand side of a structure with humongous Tres Reyes Magos columns gracing its front.

Andres, Ursula, Steven

I was planning on ordering some of this famous Puerto Rican specialty, lechon asado, so lovingly described by a fellow blogger, Speaking Boricua, just with salad, but there was no salad to be had. Instead there were all those starches I was walking around at the grocery stores: batatas, yautia, malanga, name, yuca, and some others, and I was persuaded to try at least a bit of each. Not sure if any of them is actually healthy, but I liked yautia (not particularly caring about any of the others - perhaps they are an acquired taste), and when compared to roasted pig, yautia should win hands down a healthiness contest - I presume.

Andres, 3T and Steven

The food was good and inexpensive - a dinner for five with drinks came to under $40 - an incredible bargain in pricy Puerto Rico. The company was superb and I finally - after almost 5 months in Puerto Rico - managed to try this local specialty.