Well now we finally get to the really good stuff.  Truth is, you can take the boy out of Carolina, but you just ain’t gonna take Carolina out of the boy.  Back home we used to have big barbecue parties we like to call “pig pickins.”  So I grew up with the aroma of swine wafting through my nostrils.  Actually, when I first arrived to Costa Rica I was a “semi-vegetarian.”  I was going through my Anthony Robbins phase and trying to “cleanse my body” of the impurities from all that hog I had been eating over the years.  Problem is, here in Costa Rica they like their hog too.  We eat those critters down here in the form of chicharrones.  So my vegetarianism lasted about as long as it took for me to discover this Costa Rican delicacy.  Chicharrones are pork medallions cooked in a big vat of grease (sounds real healthy, huh?)..  Sometimes they throw in strips of fat too, kinda of like grandma’s “fatback.”  A plate of chicharrones accompanied by a cold Imperial together comprise one of my great pleasures of life here in Costa Rica.  Yea, I miss the pig pickins, but this stuff is almost as good.  In my opinion the best chicharrones I have had are in the many chicharroneras in the pueblo just outside of San Jose called Aserri.  And the hands-down best of the best is a restaurant called Cacique Aserri (meaning chief, as in Indian chief, of Aserri).  This is also one of Costa Rica’s oldest chicharroneras, having celebrated its 40th anniversary recently.  At Cacique Aserri you will get a real dose of Costa Rican culture and ambiance, especially on the weekends, when they will have live marimba music and dancers with those huge homemade and hideous masks (called mascaradas) twirling and gyrating around while you stuff your face with pig.  Aserri is up in the mountains overlooking San Jose, so you can also get a great view of the city lights down in the valley as you eat.  To be fair, there is another place I love that is a close runner-up.  The name of this place is Meme Pajarita (I believe I spelled that right….the name has always mystified me), located in Ciudad Colón, also just outside of San Jose.  This is another of those truly authentic Costa Rican restaurants that also features live local music on the weekends.  Well there you have it, my secrets of where to find the best chicharrones in Costa Rica.  Take it from a lifelong pork connoisseur, it just don’t get no better than this.

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