Today was our last full day in Quito before heading southwest to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador, and our last stop on this trip before heading home. We got to have a bit of science education at the Museo de Sitio Intinan, which is actually situated almost exactly where the equator line is. Our admission included an interactive tour led in English by a guide. He discussed local indigenous cultures and old traditions (that are definitely not continuing on given how brutal they are…), explained the Coriolis Effect and how it influences everything that moves on the face of the earth, and also challenged us to a few activities, including balancing an egg (only a few people succeeded), keeping our feet straight on a single line with our eyes closed (here, we all failed. I tried to be as steady as I could, but alas, the earth’s rotation of course got to me, and I was even MORE off than I thought I’d be when I opened my eyes…), and tests of force on our arms. These all served as reminders to us that even when we think we are still, we are never, ever still: we live on a planet where we are constantly rotating.
We continued on after the visit to the equator line and enjoyed some local coffee, followed by a sumptuous lunch at the modern Ecuadorian restaurant Somos. It was so fancy that it even had a kids’ menu with very local touches, such as pasta with manaba cheese, a pizza option containing yucca sourdough, and a fruity, herby lemonade infused with local indigenous herbs. Kaia had the pasta deconstructed, and she ate all of the pasta, chicken, and sauce. She refused the cheese, though; she really does not seem interested in any cheese unless it’s stuck on a relatively plain pizza…
We started our meal with a complimentary tasting of canelazo, a panela (unrefined local cane sugar) drink that had multiple layers of flavor, including sweet, floral, and a bit of tart. I had the Amazonica beer, made with cassava, passion fruit, chonta fruit, and guayusa, while Chris had the Somos beer, a bitter style beer based on cacao husks. We had the lunch special options, which started with the corviche (green plantain and sal prietra patties filled with smoked Amazonian fish, served with slaw), and the ceviche tropical mestizo (local taxo fruit sauce with fish, cucumber, avocado, melon, served with green plantains. Our main courses were the raices del Amazonas, which was cassava puree, fried cassava, paiche fish battered in cassava flakes, chonta sango sauce, chili compote, and oregano oil; plus the chorizo ambateno — bean puree, pork belly, chistorra, avocado, tomato sauce, encurtido, potato, and egg. We ended with a banana cake served with a panela and coffee syrup, coffee butter, caramelized coffee, and banana and cacao nibs ice cream. They also gave us a last complimentary taste: three little freshly made brownie-style chocolates, which tasted particularly floraly like a lot of chocolate we’ve had in Peru and Ecuador thus far. Both starters were very fresh with lots of new flavors we were unfamiliar with. The paiche fish was definitely the highlight of the mains. And the banana cake was so unique — I doubt we’d ever have banana cake or bread served like that anywhere in the U.S. It tasted truly special and seemed very much a “modern Ecuadorian” fusion of flavors.
Somos itself was a beautiful restaurant with lots of natural light, plants, and murals inside, but what really tickled me were the bathroom signs. The women’s bathroom has a papaya hand painted on the door; the men’s bathroom door has a half-peeled banana. The papaya made me chuckle out loud.
The biodiversity of Ecuador is extremely high, and it was definitely on display here at Somos. This meal was definitely a highlight of our trip so far and how many other delicious plants (and animals!) we can eat in the world that we are not normally exposed to in the U.S. (or really, anywhere in the west).