[LifeeStyle] Is America's best restaurant in Puerto Rico?

[FRIDAY THE 13]

 

In the wee hours of a debauched night at La Factoría, the world-renowned bar in the Old San Juan neighbourhood of the Puerto Rican capital, one of its owners, Leslie Cofresi, swung his arm around my neck in a half-hug, half-headlock. "Tomorrow," he said, "I will take you to real Puerto Rico. Be ready."

The following afternoon we bounced along dirt roads in his Jeep through the countryside's lush tropical hills and mountains for an hour before coming to a red-roofed farmhouse in a clearing by a pond. The restaurant, Bacoa, opened in August 2019; by October of that year, humanitarian chef José Andrés was already visiting and shooting a television show there with Spanish adventurer Jesús Calleja.

In January 2022, Lucas Sin, one of Food & Wine's best new chefs of 2021, took a $100 taxi from San Juan straight to a nearly four-hour dinner at Bacoa (then another $100 taxi back), describing the restaurant as "seriously one of the most special restaurants in America".

"That was my favourite meal in a long time – maybe the last two years – and certainly probably one of those meals I'm going to remember for the rest of my life, on par with insane technical achievements at fine-dining tasting menus," said Sin, also comparing Bacoa to New York's Blue Hill at Stone Barns, often cited as one of America's best restaurants.

link : https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220215-is-americas-best-restaurant-in-puerto-rico