Trying to Find Puerto Rico\"s Pork Highway

Remember when you saw Anthony Bourdain gorge himself on delicious pig-products while on his trip to Puerto Rico? Yeah, that place he went to no longer exists… or at least that\’s what they\’ll be saying a few years from now. It\’s one of the last strongholds of Puerto Rican cuisine we could find anywhere on the island, and I think they\’ll all be gone soon.

In the city, there are Popeye\’s Chicken and Burger Kings as far as the eye can see. Wendy\’s, Applebee\’s, and Outback Steakhouse were no problem to find, same with high quality but non-Puerto Rican restaurants you can get back home(i.e. \”should we get Mexican tonight, or Italian? Ooh, maybe sushi??\”) but local food places were nowhere to be found.

Even the coffee – something every guide book told us was a matter of national pride – was of an unknown provenance. If you ask someone in San Juan if the breakfast place down the street serves Puerto Rican coffee, the answer you\’ll get is most likely along the lines of \”well you\’re in Puerto Rico, and it\’s coffee, soooo…..\”

Once you head inland though, the landscape becomes more mountainous and claustrophobic, but the local food choices become MUCH more expansive. We hopped in our trusty rental car and made our way to foodie heaven – the pork highway.

To be frank, if you want to get authentic food, you\’re going to have to get where the locals are. Don\’t just cruise over them on the main highway – get off the main roads and onto the little country byways. Happily, la ruta de lechon is easier to get to than most authentic food.

Head towards the town of Guavate. This is the town that highway 184 leads to, but it isn\’t your destination – you\’re just going towards it. No, the town isn\’t your destination – Highway 184 is.

Just take highway 52 to 184 and immediately after exiting 52 you\’ll be drenched in the smell of roasting pig. Just pull over at any building with a pig on a metal spit and you\’ve found your place to have lunch.

You order your pork by the pound at these sorts of places. Just tell them how many pounds you\’d like, and they\’ll take care of it for you. A healthy assortment of different parts of the pig will be hacked off for you, and all you\’ll need to do is crack open a beer and drink it all in.

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Trying to Find Puerto Rico\"s Pork Highway