good morning everybody welcome back to another episode of nicole and mico and today's video we're
going to be doing a food tour throughout ecuador yeah the food is super diverse here in ecuador so
we're going to be tasting a couple of the dishes in various parts of the country starting in banos
all right so a local friend of ours here had told us to try out this restaurant called mistizart
so we can get really good local ecuadorian food for lunch we're going to try that
okay how cool does this look so i got lappingachos con chorizo so it's llapingachos
with chorizo like chorizo sausage pork sausage llapingachos are like a fried potato pancake
stuffed with cheese what we've read they actually originated here in ecuador and are
a really common meal and this is how they're very commonly served like with a with some fried eggs
avocados some tomato and sausage this is peanut sauce this looks like an awesome awesome meal
it looks so good
honestly that's really good it's um it's fried really lightly I was worried it was gonna come out
and it would seem almost like deep fried like caked in oil but it's not at all
this is super yum okay i don't know why the like i don't know why the peanuts
sauce i wouldn't think to put them together personally but this is so good
there's always something cool going on in Banos we have been here a couple weeks we actually
took spanish lessons while we were here so we stayed here for a little while and we have seen
so many festivals and parties and celebrations like the one behind me it's a very cool town
so we're not exactly sure what it is but we know what it's made out of
we figure when we put it all together we can see if we can find the name for the entire like food
i think we got fritada con cuero which means it's with like
leather that's what it translates to she was basically pointing at like the pig's skin
so we got some pieces of the meat some pieces of the pig skin and then you can see it's made
out of like plantains these beans we found out actually called mote and then also just like
a couple other beans some onions and salsa goodness basically grilled pig skin
mmm chewy
good porky it's definitely pork very flavorful very interesting combination
of so many different things this is a whole meal i thought it was just gonna be a snack
we've seen a lot of people that typically have these it looks like around lunchtime so i wonder
if there are like a quick lunch option just like grab the street food and continue on your way
plantain split down the middle grilled with i think mozzarella cheese
inside and then put back in its husk for like a nice way to hold it i think i'm going
to take multiple bites to get to the cheese which is what i'm really here for let's try
wow
okay really rich tastes like a sweet banana um
the roastiness is perfection
i'm getting even more cheese oh the cheese adds like a salty flavor we see these everywhere
people like eat them all the time
this is a delicious midday snack so with that this delicious plantain we
are done our food tour here in banos and we are going to see you next on the coast
good morning and welcome to the coast of ecuador we're in a small town called puerto lopez and
it's like a fishing village vacation hot spot for many of the locals in ecuador
today it's a little bit overcast so instead of hitting the beach like we have been for
the past few days we're gonna head out and grab some local breakfast
okay so I got bolon
and i hope i'm saying that correctly but bolon is like a super classic ecuadorian breakfast
and actually from what we understand it originated here on the coast of ecuador
so we really wanted to try it here what it is is fried plantain which is kind of like banana
mashed up cheese is added to it and it's formed into this ball and then
fried again with what looks like i think this is cheese and a fried egg it looks it looks yummy
i've seen tons of people eating them like when we walk past folks on the street in the mornings
look at that
oh fairly plain salty mmm a little dry i like it i
have a feeling that i'm gonna get halfway through and be like that's kind of enough
um just because it's like a lot of the same flavor throughout the whole meal but it's quite good
i see why its breakfast right it's like get up you just want something gentle this is what you have
also i think this is cantaloupe juice which is so strange i don't think i've ever had cantaloupe
juice it is actually so good it's really refreshing most of the breakfasts we've
had here in ecuador when you get like the desayuno which is like the breakfast meal
it comes with like your main dish a fresh juice and a coffee this was all for four dollars all
right so i got a very similar dish to nicole i got the tegrillo which also originates from the
ecuadorian coast and is also a very famous ecuadorian breakfast it is green plantain
mashed up with cheese and egg and then they sometimes add a couple different things to it
i got chicharron added to it it kind of looks like a mixed like hash brown omelet
but instead of potatoes you have green plantain and then you throw an egg on top
this is very very common breakfast here in ecuador we've seen it lots of times
oh that's good
this thing's gonna be very filling it's a very heavy dish it's almost kind of like hash browns
but like not as crispy a little softer and like infused with cheese and a couple different things
like the chicharron i can't tell if it's like a mashup between a hash brown or an omelette
i don't know what it's closer to but this is really yummy oh
very different from this i thought it would taste similar
i think i can taste like the like the meat fattiness like it has a different
a different taste to it that's very yummy the egg like mixed in looks really good
okay so tegrillo versus balon don't say that i think i'm team tegrillo i think i am too
all right we are looking for dinner we'll try some more ecuadorian food but it is a holiday here
in ecuador we're not exactly sure what holiday but it's very lively here in puerto lopez it's
cool though it's so like bright and light and like there's just so much life
all right well you can't come to puerto lopez on the coast of ecuador and not try the ceviche
because seafood is huge here so ceviche is a very popular dish in latin america ecuadorian
ceviche is apparently very different than the surrounding areas like peruvian ceviche theirs
is usually a bit more like soupier than like peru or like mexico so i got the ceviche de mixto which
is like shrimp and fish in the ceviche it looks really good it smells really good and it's like
you got the shrimp in there you got the fish in there and it's kind of like a lemony limey kind
of broth with a lot of garnishing onions green peppers tomatoes and some cucumbers
good it's like almost a little creamy and it's like lukewarm so i heard in some places you can
get ceviche with like raw seafood ecuador i think usually cooks their seafood for their ceviche
that is a really really great way to try the local seafood
but that's it for now in puerto lopez we'll see you in cuenca
everyone we've made it inland to the charming town of cuenca cuenca ecuador is one of the best places
you can try traditional ecuadorian foods now that it's lunch time we're heading over to a market
nearby that has a lot of local foods we're just going to go in and try as many dishes as we can
okay so we've made it to mercado ten de agosto we've noticed that a lot of the
markets here are named after dates they always are did you just say ten de agosto
dis you just mix english and spanish close enough so we absolutely love when they put pictures to
the items of food because we never know what we want to eat or we should try but i think
we're gonna try we're hoping to find morocho at some point today we've heard it's like a really
delicious kind of desserty drink and then mote pillo i think is really like classic for cuenca
mico's also got a dish that we gotta find for him which is like i think a giant pig
so this totally looks like a filipino dish called lechon and uh funny enough it's actually named
very similar it's lechon de hornado or hornado as it's like locally known as but it's basically
a roasted pig and it's like roasted for like four to six hours depending on the family's recipe it
looks and smells amazing we got the hornato which obviously is the pork and they also added in some
papas or some potatoes and we got some skin of the pork and then i believe this is like the mote
beans that we've been seeing a lot of during out time here in ecuador and they
have like a little like garnishing of like a little bit of a salad or something like that
wow
tastes like roasted pork a little salty but honestly super delicious i bought this plate is
five dollars and then she says i can buy like a five dollar plate or a six dollar plate or
seven dollar plate so i assume that the more more you pay you get like more of the meat
a lot of places here sell hornado and i don't i've heard you can't go to like an ecuadorian festival
or party without seeing like a big roasted pig or an hornado like somewhere nearby so
this is the like very crispy outer layer of the hornado which is the pig skin basically
that was good okay that was probably one of my favorite dishes in ecuador but that's just
me as a meat lover slash filipino that was so good now i'm going to look for nicole's lunch
i got mote pillo which is i understand like a very typical ecuadorian i think
specifically cuencen dish it is a certain type of corn kernel they call it mote its a type of
corn mixed with scrambled egg and then here they've topped it off with cheese
it's good it's plain i'm glad you brought some salt and pepper i think that would really help it
honestly it's really yummy it's subtle like it's just like eggs and the mote like the corn kernels
i honestly would call them almost flavorless like it feels like a good like filler but
they honestly don't have a lot of taste in themselves pretty good i see why it
might be good for breakfast when you're just getting up and don't want anything too rich
so something we've seen all over the place and haven't actually tried yet are there these nuts
called tostados i think they're like a roasted corn nut and i think they're seasoned with
something we see them all over you can even buy them on the streets i don't know much they are
okay
gracias
extra i don't know why
cute right i can tell they're roasted oh they're salty okay i feel like they're kind of
like a sunflower seed without all the work of the sunflower suits they remind me of like truly of um
popcorn kernels at the bottom of your popcorn bowl but way softer and easier to chew
little man okay
this market has everything we just keep like walking down the aisles and finding more things
to try so i think we're gonna get something called morocho at least that's what we ordered
it's only 50 cents and it's like a desserty drink oh it's warm morocho is a mixture of
milk sugar and ground white corn that is like native to ecuador um yeah served hot i guess
and look if i dig i get like little chunkies my guess is that's the corn
okay kind of weird to have like a chunk of corn but other than that it just tastes like thick
really sweet cinnamon yeah cinnamon milk that's hot
wait it reminds me strangely of um
api we had it in bolivia in la paz and it was really good i thought i was gonna hate that
but that was also corn based and i think it had cinnamon and nutmeg in it this is quite similar
that's good i like that okay perfect thank you this is what they consider as the national
dish of ecuador this is encebollado it's otherwise known as like the hangover cure
for ecuadorians it's basically like a fish stew with mixed with like boiled cassava and
pickled red onion rings and then i guess they got some tostados that we had earlier
on there as well there's loads of different types of encebollado we saw one in quito that
looked way different than this just a big bowl of fish stew and onion rings definitely fishy
oh wow that's really good fish and onion what an interesting mixture okay maybe why they call
it like the hangover cure it's because it's such a blast of like very specific flavors
of like fish and onion that it just like wipes away like everything else in your mouth like a
smell or the taste of the night before everything it's like a reset of all your senses
with just very potent soup i really like it
okay well that's a wrap on eating our way through ecuador turns out ecuadorian food is amazing yeah
true we really liked it but if you're from here or you have been here you know someone from here
and you know there's a dish that we should have tried that we missed write in the comments below
and we will know for the next time that either we visit or if anybody else watching this is looking
to try and see what foods to eat here they can read through the comments too and see what they
should what they should try while they're here definitely and with that we'll leave you there