What's the food like in the markets in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua?

There are several places where you can buy food in San Juan del Sur. There is a major supermarket in San Juan Del Sur called The Tali. They have canned goods and packaged goods, different kinds of cheese, and vegetables, which are very common in Nicaragua. You can also go to the street market which is much like a farmer’s market (open-air market). There you can buy fruits and vegetables, meat, chicken, bread and of course, fresh fish.

 

The fish that...

There are several places where you can buy food in San Juan del Sur. There is a major supermarket in San Juan Del Sur called The Tali. They have canned goods and packaged goods, different kinds of cheese, and vegetables, which are very common in Nicaragua. You can also go to the street market which is much like a farmer’s market (open-air market). There you can buy fruits and vegetables, meat, chicken, bread and of course, fresh fish.

 

The fish that the fishermen catch wind up fairly quickly in the supermarkets and the open air market so they are extremely fresh. Which fish are being sold depends on what the fresh catch of the day was. They catch different kinds of fish but the quantity all depends on how the fishing went that day. There is not a lot of commercial fishing in San Juan Del Sur. Most of the fishing is long line fishing so that means that sometimes there may be a scarcity of fish depending on the season and different external factors that would cause the scarcity. The types of fish that are common in San Juan Del Sur are Mahi Mahi, Snapper, Group, Mackerel, Yellowfin Tuna, and Bluefin Tuna.

 

You can also buy fresh meat at the central park. Nicaragua is known for exporting beef so there are a lot of local butcher shops here that sell fresh meat. These are grass-fed cows so the tenderness of their meat would depend on the cut of meat you buy.  

 

There is not as much food variety in San Juan del Sur as there is in the US, but common grocery items like milk, bread, meat, and cereals are very accessible here in San Juan Del Sur.

 

If you are going to buy imported goods from the US, they are definitely more expensive compared to buying them in the US but the mark up is not that high. Here in my house, we always stock up on Oreos, Cheetos, and Doritos and they are not too expensive.  You would pay only about 10% more than its price in the States.

 

The supermarkets here are pretty organized and almost everything that you need or want coming straight from the US are available in these places. If you have a list of things that you buy in the US, you’ll be able to get about 70% of it in the supermarkets here in San Juan Del Sur.

There is a small supermarket in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua that sells basic foods, but if you want something in particular or if you are looking for a specific brand, you can go to Rivas (35 minutes away by car) or Granada (1.5 hours away by car). Most expats do that when they need to.

 

For example, if you are looking for the brand "I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter," you will not find it here in San Juan Del Sur. You have to go to...

There is a small supermarket in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua that sells basic foods, but if you want something in particular or if you are looking for a specific brand, you can go to Rivas (35 minutes away by car) or Granada (1.5 hours away by car). Most expats do that when they need to.

 

For example, if you are looking for the brand "I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter," you will not find it here in San Juan Del Sur. You have to go to Rivas to buy that. Most North American products can be found in Rivas, but if you just need basic domestic products such as fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, and fish then you can find them here in San Juan Del Sur with fair prices

The food in the markets in San Juan Del Sur is typical Nicaraguan food. It is nothing out of the ordinary.  You will find a little bit more seafood or fish, but generally, you will find typical Nicaraguan dish: rice and beans, meat, chicken, pork, fish, vegetables and fruits that are in season.

 

We have two kinds of markets. The first one is the artisan market, which locally called mercado artesanal. That is the lower class market where...

The food in the markets in San Juan Del Sur is typical Nicaraguan food. It is nothing out of the ordinary.  You will find a little bit more seafood or fish, but generally, you will find typical Nicaraguan dish: rice and beans, meat, chicken, pork, fish, vegetables and fruits that are in season.

 

We have two kinds of markets. The first one is the artisan market, which locally called mercado artesanal. That is the lower class market where everyone goes and it is exactly like a farmers' market. They do not accept credit cards in the artisan market. You pay everything in cash and everything is also much cheaper. There is also less hygiene there and you are not sure where the food came from. They have fresh produce that was locally grown, too.

 

You will also find eateries inside the artisan market. The typical food that you can buy from these eateries is called un servicio, which is composed of rice, beans, meat or chicken, and plantains. That goes for around 60 to 75 Cordobas (US $2 to $3) for a meal. They have chicken stew, meat stew, carne asal, pollo asal, pollo frito (fried chicken) for the same amount.

 

(Pictured is a Nicaraguan-style quesillo: a tortilla wrapped around pickled onions and a soft, white cheese.)

 

The second kind of food market in San Juan del Sur is called the Pali, which is a supermarket chain of Walmart. There you will find typical Nicaraguan food along with other imported goods. Pali is something new to San Juan Del Sur.  It was opened just about three years ago and it turned the city around. Now, you can just hop in a car, drive to San Juan Del Sur, go to Pali, and buy everything you need.

 

It is cheaper to buy food in the artisan market. As an example, a pound of rice in Pali costs around 25 Cordobas but in the market, it will only be around 19 Cordobas. A pound of red beans in Pali is around 35 Cordobas, but it is just around 28 Cordobas in the artisan market. Local cheese in Pali is around 50 Cordobas and in the artisan market, it is just around 42 Cordobas. You will not find a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, cornflakes or cereals in the artisan market. You will only find local products that people brought to the market to sell at a lower price.

As far as street meat from roadside vendors, I always stay away from that, but San Juan del Sur’s got some awesome restaurants. There are really good restaurants up and down the beach and even back in the city as well. Definitely, if you went there for a week you could eat at different restaurants every single meal and have awesome meals the whole time.

 

As for us here in Popoyo, we do a lot of our grocery shopping in Managua, which is a little bit...

As far as street meat from roadside vendors, I always stay away from that, but San Juan del Sur’s got some awesome restaurants. There are really good restaurants up and down the beach and even back in the city as well. Definitely, if you went there for a week you could eat at different restaurants every single meal and have awesome meals the whole time.

 

As for us here in Popoyo, we do a lot of our grocery shopping in Managua, which is a little bit closer. There are really good and really big grocery stores in Managua. There’s a Price Mart there and we’re just about to get our first Wal-Mart in November, which is going to be crazy, so we’re coming out of the Third World a little bit. 

 

Where we live, we’re farther away from the Pan-American Highway and don’t have paved roads all the way out here yet. We’re just near the airport that just got done. We can take a different road to Managua but if you came in from the southern part there are the new paved roads that go almost the entire way to us.  When we’re going north to Managua we take another dirt road for about 17 miles before we get onto the Pan-American. We’re about 2 and a half hours from Managua and I’d say San Juan is probably close to the same but they have paved roads always so it’s farther but we get there in about the same timeframe.  

 

We do buy some stuff locally. We are in business so there are trucks that come out here, like a vegetable truck or a rum truck, a beer truck, and a water truck. There’s local “pupuserias” that sell small items. But most of the time if you’re living out here you have to do certain things in the capital city so it kind of works out to go to Managua and do big buys there and bring your items back home. Alternatively, you can get local items in Rivas, and San Juan del Sur has it’s own grocery store there and it’s a little bit more of a city. But we generally buy our stuff in Managua and bring it out here.   

 

(Food stall in Managua, Nicaragua, pictured.)

There is one simple food market in San Juan Del Sur. It consists of eight to ten fruit and vegetable stalls. You can buy beautiful, fresh produce such as fruits and vegetables. You can get pineapples, bananas, passion fruit, dragon fruit when in season, oranges for orange juice, and tasty and delicious watermelon; and an assortment of regular simple vegetables as well, like onions, potatoes, carrots, and squash. There's nothing that I can't get here that I really long for all the...

There is one simple food market in San Juan Del Sur. It consists of eight to ten fruit and vegetable stalls. You can buy beautiful, fresh produce such as fruits and vegetables. You can get pineapples, bananas, passion fruit, dragon fruit when in season, oranges for orange juice, and tasty and delicious watermelon; and an assortment of regular simple vegetables as well, like onions, potatoes, carrots, and squash. There's nothing that I can't get here that I really long for all the time.

 

Some of the things we cannot easily purchase here in San Juan Del Sur include fresh mushrooms, which are very difficult to get. You can find them in Managua, but not here in San Juan Del Sur. I saw someone on our Facebook group who was recently asking if they could get asparagus here. You can, but not here in San Juan Del Sur; only in Managua and maybe in Granada sometimes.

 

The fruits are seasonal. Right now it's mango season. You can get a big, beautiful mango for 10 Cordobas (US $0.30).

 

In the market, there is a butcher where you can purchase meat. The chicken is really delicious. There's also beef, pork, ground beef, and eggs. You can buy the fresh local cheese that they make all over Nicaragua, which is called "cuajada". I personally do not have a taste for it. Gordon, my husband, likes it. It's very salty and looks like feta cheese. Most people ask, "Does it taste like feta?" and I don't think it tastes like feta. Gordon thinks it does. It's often served fried on a fried plantain. 

 

There's this appetizer called tostones con queso that's on almost every menu of local restaurants everywhere in Nicaragua. They use cuajada cheese, cut it in cubes, fry it, and place it on tostones.  Tostones are green plantains that are cut in rounds, fried once, taken out of the oil, smashed, and then fried again.

 

(Pink pitaya, mangoes and limes at the market, San Juan del Sur, Mexico, pictured.)