I recently traveled to el Salvador and I knew going in that the food was going to be a piece of interest for me. My husband is from el Salvador so I was already familiar with the types of foods that would be offered but I was very curious about how the tastes or the cooking styles would be different from here in the US.
As expected, the food was amazing, the Coke Cola does taste better, you do eat a lot of pupusas and beans are offered at every meal in every restaurant you go to. But what stuck out the most for me were the menus. Here are a few things I noticed:
No Calories
Not a single calorie was listed on the menus. This was so nice to see. We were there for 14 days so were able to eat at a lot of different restaurants in different parts of the country and not a single menu listed calories. You had menu items, pricing, sometimes a description of ingredients but never a calorie. It brought me back to the old days here in the states where you had to decide if you wanted to eat something simply off the item listed! As an ex-calorie counter who finds calories on a menu to be disordered clutter, it was very refreshing to find simple menus that focused on the food.
No Diet-Focused Groupings
There were no “Lighter Fare” sections or “Under 600 calories” sections. At most you would see sections like drinks, entrees, desserts or maybe seafood, beef or vegetables. But let us be honest- we know how food sits in our stomachs. We don’t need a restaurant menu to tell us that. For those that count calories out there, you don’t need a menu to tell you which items have 600 calories or less. You likely don’t trust what they’re telling you anyway because you know the margin of error on calorie counting in a restaurant setting is highly flawed.
Now I know that not every restaurant here in the states lists calories but it seems that more and more restaurants are moving towards having calories listed (at least where I live). So, it was very refreshing to be in a place where this was not the case. Restaurant after restaurant simply said,
“This is what we can cook you. Pick what sounds good.”
