Yaragua restaurant

By Howard Rosenzweig
Copan Update, Honduras This Week
May 29, 2006

Restaurante Yaragua opened its doors a few months back and the initial results are very promising. It is wedged between Hotel Yaragua and Yaragua Tours - the restaurant that goes by the same name and shares the same owner - and has earned quite a name for itself amongst locals and tourists for their large well-prepared portions of hearty typical fare. The dining room is a simple affair and reflects the town itself: saddles, ceramics and other local paraphernalia hang from wooden beams and walls, chairs and tables are simple and sturdy, stressing utility over comfort.

There is a small bar with the requisite color television and the place is one of the few in town to boast air-conditioning for those hot days when staying cool is the priority. The menu is heavy on typical Copan chow like grilled meats that come with the requisite sides of refried beans, rice, hard country cheese, tortillas and chismol. It offers up heaped portions of perfectly grilled steaks and chicken as well as fish and seafood dishes.

My particular favorite is the grilled boneless chicken breast served with either a mountain of fries or, better yet, typical style with all the local fixings like beans, rice, and encurtido (pickled veggies). The chicken was grilled just as ordered, well done, which many restaurants in Copan have a problem with as cooks here are very reluctant to serve a really well done piece of chicken or beef.

Other recommended dishes include a monstrous fillet mignon ringed with bacon and the requisite sides. Each Saturday, the chef cooks up a huge pot of typical soup, each week a different kind. One week it may be a seafood soup brimming with whole crab, shrimp and chock full of veggies, another week may bring tapado, a Honduran specialty made with coconut milk. For the uninitiated, soups in Honduras are a full meal, not an entree; they are big, hearty, robust affairs that are taken with a pile of freshly warmed tortillas and a cold Honduran beer.

Fish at Yaragua is best left to the local tilapia variety, which is raised on a local fish farm. Tilapia are prized for their white, meaty flesh and are served up whole, with head and tail and well fried to a crispy, crunchy brown and comes with a side of fried plantains, salad and a hunk of lemon to squirt over it. Honduras by the way is now the second biggest Latin American exporter of tilapia fillet (Ecuador is numero uno) to the US market.

For dessert, there is a mouth watering, in house baked cheesecake, which is one of the best I've tasted in a long time. Copan is not much of a dessert town, most restaurants do not offer sweets on their menus, so any eatery in town that can serve up a sliver of flan or a hunk of cheesecake is way ahead of the game in my book.

Service at Yaragua is still in its infancy although the staff really try to please and often succeed with pure youthful determination and energy. Despite occasional lapses in service, I'd say that service at Yaragua is just as good or better as any restaurant in town, simply because the staff at Yaragua are young, energetic and eager to please. Over time, the waiting staff will mature and improve their technique and with the quality of food now served, Yaragua will become a food force to be reckoned with in Copan's competitive restaurant market.

Proprietor Samuel Miranda is the force behind all the Yaragua enterprises - hotel, tour operator and restaurant - and, believe it or not, he has additional projects in various stages of development as well. Although Samuel is a newcomer to the food service business, he puts the same hard work and determination into his new restaurant venture as he puts into his hotel and tour operator. He is an entrepreneur who knows no boundaries and sees opportunities and attractive niche markets where other more timid entrepreneurs see only obstacles, roadblocks and interminable 15-hour days.

Sombreros off to Samuel and his team for a job well done, Copan could use a few more empresarios like him in order to bring more dynamism and energy to Copan's hospitality, food service and tourist services scene.