“It’s been rocky, but we are resilient.” Puerto Rico’s food scene had reached a peak before a series of calamities hit — a hurricane, earthquakes, a pandemic. But restaurant owners and chefs say it's thriving again as the pandemic wanes.
“The culinary industry is part of our culture,” Vazquez said. “People love our food. They fly down here and want to try our local cuisine. It’s very good food.”
Restaurant owners jumped into action and, with the help of chef José Andrés and food/product supplier Frutos del Guacabo, set up makeshift kitchens that served more than 3.5 million meals as Puerto Ricans tried to get back on their feet. Restaurants slowly began reopening — some scaled down, others in new locations — and by late 2019, there were about 4,000 operating on the island.Puerto Rico was hit with a swarm of earthquakes starting that December, the most damaging a magnitude 6.4.
“Each time it’s a different test,” Fruto del Gaubacho co-owner Efrén Robles said. “You learn the test and then they change the answers... We’ve been able to adjust in a very short amount of time.”Puerto Rico rebounded from the earthquakes to have some of the best tourism numbers in its history and restaurants were doing well, even during the offseason.
Because Puerto Rico is a small island, COVID-19 measures were widely enforced, while standards in the rest of the United States often varied from state to state. Restaurants rode the ebbs and flows of the pandemic, some opening at limited capacity by May and expanding from there as restrictions began to loosen.
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