Don’t read any further if you are trying to eat a healthy diet. This won’t help.
The first time Ginger and I ever walked around Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, we had no plan of attack. We just decided that we would disembark from the Sun Princess and walk around, seeing the sights. And it was amazing. A step back in time. Just look at these images. This are is right off the ship.
As we walked around the city early that morning, we knew we would want to try some local food before we had to be back on board the ship. Coming down Calle de San Fransisco, we noticed a long line of people crowding the sidewalk in front of a building. When we saw that it was a place called Cafeteria Mallorca, we KNEW this would be something special.
We knew absolutely nothing about Cafetería Mallorca when we found it. We were just walking through Old San Juan when we noticed that line of people stretching outside this old-fashioned little restaurant. We have a general rule when traveling: if a bunch of people are willing to stand around in the heat waiting for food, there is at least a reasonable chance that we should find out why.
The answer was the mallorca. What is a mallorca, you ask? Well, a Puerto Rican mallorca is a soft, slightly sweet, buttery bread.
The Puerto Rican mallorca isn’t named after the restaurant. The pastry takes its name from the Spanish island of Mallorca, where its ancestor, the ensaïmada, originated. Puerto Rico basically took the idea and said, “You know what this needs? Butter, powdered sugar and maybe some ham and cheese.” A sound decision, in my opinion.
Yes. I said they start with something along the lines of a sweet breakfast bread, and add meat and cheese. I can feel my arteries hardening.
Slice it, butter it, toast it on the griddle and cover it with powdered sugar. You can eat it that way—which is already pretty darn good—or stuff it with things like ham, cheese and eggs and turn it into one of the better breakfast sandwiches you’re likely to stumble across in the entirety of the Planet Earth.
The place itself looks like it hasn’t spent a lot of time worrying about interior design trends, and that is part of the appeal. It’s an old-school diner, complete with the long counter, longtime employees and people actually coming there to eat instead of just get selfies. Which we did do. Of course. We walked in because of the line. We walked out understanding why there was a line.
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