As a health conscious vegetarian, sometimes it’s difficult finding a decent restaurant for dinner when I’m traveling abroad. In Costa Rica, one of my favorite destinations, I have seen a number of my preferred dining spots in San Jose ( the capital city) disappear over the years including the Macrobiotic Restaurant and Mordisco. In particular, the Macrobiotic restaurant, situated in an old colonial house in the downtown area, was one of the best gourmet vegetarian restaurants that I have ever been to. The food was very delicious, all the produce was organic and it was moderately priced. Too bad, they closed their doors sometime in the early 1990s.

On my last couple of visits to San Jose, Costa Rica, I sampled a number of Chinese restaurants; the food at best was mediocre. In general, the menu choices were limited to such mundane Chinese dishes like chop suey, chow mein, wonton soup, chicken fried rice and in general the entrees were overloaded with salt and oil. Totally Chinese greasy spoon! Well on my last trip to San Jose, in February 2005, I did a little research in advance on the Internet for vegetarian restaurants in San Jose. I believe it was on the Happy Cow website, that I discovered Tin Jo, a pan Asian restaurant in downtown San José that offered both vegan and vegetarian dishes on their very diverse menu which features dishes from China, Thailand, India, Japan and Indonesia. I believe one of the owners is a transplanted Thai lady.

On the three nights that I went for dinner in San Jose, I ended up at Tin Jo and on all three nights the place was packed with mix of Josefinas and gringos. Believe it or not, on two of the three nights, there was a waiting list for an available table. This popular restaurant is located in the middle of one of San José’s many red light districts; the neighborhood sort of reminded me of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco. The restaurant, moderately large in size with separate smoking and nonsmoking sections, had a colorful, somewhat eclectic Asian ambiance with Chinese vases and various Buddha and dragon statutes scattered around the place. While definitely not quite gourmet, I found the food to be fairly tasty and healthfully prepared (and I definitely was able to get my tofu fix). Prices were moderate for the San Jose area and about 20-25% less than a comparable Asian restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area. The fact that I ate at Tin Jo every night while in San José has to tell you something….Pura Vida!

Factoid - Josefinas is a colloquial term for residents of San Jose, Costa Rica

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