Another restaurant we found in La Fortuna was called Lava Rocks. This place a had a much simpler atmosphere than La Choza de Laurel, but that was fine by. I searched for my new favorite food, the “Tipical” dish and found that it was called Casado here. Further research has taught me that “casado” means married, because this is the type of meal that married men get at home. Thanks for the info, Wikipedia!
Although not married, I was happy to eat like a casado. I ordered my casado with chicken again. The nice thing about the dish is that no two restaurants seem to serve it the same way.This was nice, because I could just keep ordering the same dish at different restaurants and still have the opportunity to try out a variety of tastes. The only downside was that almost every place threw a salad in with the casado. For this particular dish, the corn chips were some of the best I’ve ever had. They were great for dipping in the mashed potatoes (or was it yuca?) and black beans. The chicken meat here wasn’t as good as at La Choza de Laurel, but it wasn’t bad either.
I also tested out a strange brown sauce that had been on the table at both restaurants. It tasted a bit like steak sauce, except thicker. It was good to dip the chicken into, but nothing amazing. I would come to find this sauce at just about every restaurant I went to.
In the end, Lava Rocks treated me well. The centerpiece of the meal wasn’t amazing and the dish could have used one more addition like a fried plantain, but the corn chips and mashed potatoes were pretty awesome.
