Los 3 Cuernos

Craft store by day, hipster bar by night, is probably the most concise description of the Old San Juan pub known as Los 3 Cuernos. This translates into three things: beautiful decor, limited space, and flavored chichaito.

Walking through Old San Juan at night, streets glistening after a recent rain as yellow and white streetlights reflected off the cobblestones, I made my way from the central square of Plaza de Armas down Calle San Francisco. I fell into pace behind a lady carrying several loaded bags of groceries, slightly hunched, and vaguely aware of someone following her, on occasion glancing over her shoulder discreetly. For some reason she felt familiar to me but I couldn’t place her. Soon the lights of Plaza Colón and the dark shadow of the San Cristóbal fort came into view but instead of turning down towards the plaza she continued past a crowd of twenty-something year olds hanging out of a narrow entrance, up a couple of steps, under a wooden sign with the words Los 3 Cuernos roughly painted on, and into a colorful cave where music played loudly while a few televisions showed old movies in mute. I went in behind her.

Crema de Zanahorias y Calabasa

Whenever Julia Child dropped something on camera or flipped a potato pancake too early or generally fumbled about the kitchen in a manner that made the BBC believe that she was drunk, she would look at the camera, her trademark smile fading for a moment.

"Never apologize," she said, looking the housewife taking copious notes of her deceptively easy recipes straight in the eyes. "Just smile and serve your food as if nothing was wrong."

Most of the time, no one except you thinks anything is wrong anyway.

Me, I cook with disclaimers. "Its too spicy, its a little messy, I know what I did wrong..." But heaven help you if you don't eat the damn thing.