?> {"id":1607,"date":"2009-11-17T19:43:12","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T00:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2009-11-17T21:12:34","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T02:12:34","slug":"el-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/2009\/11\/el-nato\/","title":{"rendered":"El \u00d1ato"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The guide who picked us up from the airport gave us a few recommendations for dinner in the city. Her first was Lo Nuestro, the seafood restaurant we went to our first night in Guayaquil. Her second recommendation was El \u00d1ato, a traditional barbeque restaurant that was conveniently located across the street from our hotel. That was perfect, as I had been craving barbequed meat after eating so much seafood on the ship.<\/p>\n
After we returned from our long walk down the Malecon and the hike up Santa Ana hill, we made our way across the street to the restaurant. The first thing I noticed was that we were the only tourists in the joint, which was great sign. There were lots of families having dinner and huge groups of friends chatting over pitchers of sangria. We probably looked a bit out of place but that didn\u2019t matter, I was happy to eat somewhere that seemed authentically Ecuadorian.<\/p>\n
The restaurant had a large menu but we had a hard time navigating through it, even though Josh\u2019s spanish is really good and mine is somewhat passable. Getting grilled meat was obviously the way to go, but the choices were vague. There were several \u201cmixed grill\u201d options but they didn\u2019t specify exactly what was included. We tried asking the waiter but he couldn\u2019t really explain the differences. We ended getting the one that said \u201cmixed grill with beef and chicken,\u201d as that seemed like the safest bet. They didn\u2019t have much in the way of side dishes so we got a plate of French fries. No salchipapas on the menu, sadly.<\/p>\n
We ordered a pitcher of sangria with fruit, and it had chunks of watermelon in it that I thought was a nice touch. I also liked that there was no ice in the sangria pitcher; they gave you ice in your glass so that the sangria didn\u2019t get watered down. It was very tasty and refreshing.<\/p>\n
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