"mucho es tanto, pero no culantro"

Like much of Central America, Panamanian food at its simplest follows the classic rice and beans structure accompanied by indigenous plants, root vegetables and local fish.  For flair, the epitome of Latin America: yuca (cassava) and culantro.

Platos tipicos include all manners of yuca--fried, boiled, steamed, and deep fried again (those Panamanians love their fried yuca the way Americans love french fries), as well as corvina (sea bass) most commonly found in ceviche or simply fried whole. 

Because of its role as an international gateway between both east and west as well as north and south, the influx of foreign foods into the Panamanian diet is astounding.  This brings the question of the globalization of cuisine to the forefront of modern Panama, particularly Panama City, who's restaurants run the gamut from Japanese sushi to Indian curry.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not a strictly modern phenomena.  Panama has long been host to global interests-from the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, to the French attempt to build the canal in the late 1800s, to American ownership of the canal zone until 1999.  Lest we not forget the lives and laborers who furthered the culinary dimensions of the region: Africans, Chinese, South and Central Americans, etc.  Layer upon layer of culinary richness inform the Panamanian diet, begging Anthony Bourdain's question: "Is Panama just the canal?"

Can you separate a strictly indigenous or Panamanian cuisine?  The national dish of Panama is alleged to be sancocho, a simple chicken soup with yuca, corn on the cob and a heady dose of culantro.  Yet sancocho is not specific to Panama--it is a meat stew common in many parts of Central and South America.

The origins of ceviche are hotly debated (is it a dish imported from coastal Spain by explorers seeking to preserve fish? There are also citations of ceviches made in Aztec society in central Mexico).  In Panama, the ceviche is usually raw corvina "cooked" with lime juice (the acid denatures the proteins, altering their structure similar to the way heat does) seasoned with onions and culantro.  Neither of these dishes have any strict geographical claim to Panama.  Is it the culantro, then, that makes it unique?

Culantro, as well, is common to many cuisines of Latin America, the Caribbean as well as those of Thailand and Vietnam.  A distant cousin of cilantro (in appearances closer to a primordial spiked romaine lettuce with an almost celery-esque fibrous stalk), culantro is decidedly more pungent than cilantro.  It is delicious (for lover's of cilantro, at least...word on the street is some people have a certain genetically inherited enzyme that makes cilantro taste like soap, thus the love it/hate it attitude, so much so that anti-cilantro web communities exist by the hundreds), and it flavored almost every dish i enjoyed in Panama--from ceviche, salsa, salad, stew, fish and chicken.  (Research seems to be pending on the soap-flavor enzyme, and it is unclear if this applies to culantro as well, I believe not).

Despite the constant exchange of foodways between Panama and the cuisines of the globe, it is indigenous ingredients like culantro that maintain a grasp on something purely Panamanian.  With roots dating back to pre-Columbian times, used by peoples over hundreds of years for both culinary and medicinal purposes, the flavor of culantro (to me at least) is the flavor of Panama.  Even more so as it is a local ingredient being incorporated into the ever-increasingly diverse realm of international cuisines on Panamanian soil.

Is it possible for any post-colonial country emerging in the 21st century to claim a "pure," local cuisine?  As long as societies have existed so too has globalization.  Obviously not on the grand scale we see today, but trade, the exchange of foodstuffs and information has long influenced the developmental trajectory of societies.  Even in the U.S. we struggle with defining our "national cuisine," as we have always prided ourselves as a melting pot of cultures and foodways.  Countries like Panama have an even bigger culinary burden to bear: maintaining an autonomous cuisine while incorporating the generations of chefs, cooks and ingredients who have made that country home.

[Interesting readings on exchange of foodstuffs through trade and exploration and globalized food: The Columbian Exchange by Alfred Crosby and Home Cooking in the Global Village by Richard Wilk.]