reading or writing

i seem to be able to spend an inordinate amount of time reading. i think i should probably spend more time writing. one thing i don’t want to do is to publish a lot of stuff that tires out all three readers here, so maybe i will work on stuff offline and then post it up as whole pieces. plenty of things take place around here that bear chronicling, but it sort of feels to me that without a narrative thread or some other kind of context provided, they won’t really be as entertaining as they could be. in other words, i am not sure that blog posts are the best medium to write about a lot of my experiences down here.
so i mentioned in the last post that i had a defining steak-eating experience in san jose. phil and i had talked about going to the argentinian parrilla here in puerto viejo but never made it. san jose has a reputation in almost all of the tourist guides, and all of the personal anecdotes related to me, as being a place you should immediately leave upon arriving (i disagree with that assessment). i also have heard a lot of people deride the quality of food in costa rica. so it came as a huge and pleasant surprise when phil and i walked into donde carlos, in the los yoses district across the street from the fatima church, and had a meal that kicked 100% ass on pretty much every restaurant steak i have had in my life. i hesitate to use superlatives like this, because there is nothing more effete than someone blathering on sycophantically about some food they ate. maybe in lieu of describing how good it was, i will just list what we had, and leave it that every single dish was superb in every way possible. fresh baked bread and chimichurris, and chorizo made in-house to start. then i had a caprese salad, and phil had a caesar. then the house sirloin for two, with grilled tomatoes and peppers and onions. finished with a tropical fruit plate flambéed at the table. i drank yerba maté and phil had a few bavarians (a costa rican beer with a lot more flavor than the more popular imperial and pilsen, which taste like american lagers).