(Today is Monday - sancocho day at El Rincon Familiaria. It's appropriate that El Rincon and sancocho is the next stop on our gastronomic tour. These pictures and the article are actually from our trip to Puerto Rico in August, 2006. But, hmmm...I may just have to go to El Rincon for lunch today. I'll let you know.)
“Sancocho?”
“No sancocho,”
“Sold out? No!”
“Si. Agotoda.”
“Sancocho el lunes proximo?”
“Si. Proximo. Next Moanday.” She said it with a big forward hopping gesture of her arm.
Sancocho is something between a stew and a sopa (soup). Usually it has chunks of biftec (beef steak), sometimes corn sometimes still on the cob, potato, sometimes sweet potato and other root vegetables all in a thick broth. It’s wonderful.
But at El Rincon, a little familaria on Carr. 110, about five miles from Ola Lola's, sancocho is the lunch special on Mondays. That’s the only time they make it and when it’s gone, it’s gone. It was our bad luck to come in just after
I don’t know if it was some cosmic karma – after all, they live here and can get sancocho every week – but their big red pick up truck, parked next to us in the sloping parking lot, had a flat rear tire.
We ate lunch at El Rincon anyway. I had a very tender biftec con arroz blanco y cebollo (onion). Elaine had a wonderful lasagna con pollo. Chicken is not something we usually think of in lasagna but it was delicious. With salads for both of us and sodas to drink, our whole bill was about $11.
El Rincon is one of those little local places where you get a real taste Puerto Rico, of what the locals eat, a local taste that is not fried. Lydia and Carmin and most of the clientele at El Rincon speak very little English. But between their limited English and our espanol horible, we've always managed to get a great lunch.We did go back to El Rincon the next Monday. I had sancocho. But Elaine was so impressed with the lasagna con pollo she had that again.
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