Pangea Restaurant in Panama City Panama
Tel: 392-7366/59.
El Cangrejo
Calle Alberto Navarro
I just absolutely love the interior design & entire concept of Pangea. It has multiple themes, rooms & music. The place exudes high class without pretentiousness. It’s unfortunate that their menu doesn’t match the quality of everything else.
While the food appears to be fresh, in this foodie’s opinion the chef doesn’t know what he is doing.
I ordered the Pangea salad asking for the dressing on the side & it’s a good thing I did, because it had no taste other than vinegar.
I asked for lime & salt. I was brought lime juice which is a first in Panama.
Because I couldn’t control the flow since it was in a condiment bowel, my salad was too tart.
The salt was another story. The salt would’t come out of the shaker.
While the waitress brought me another shaker, she didn’t test it before giving it to me, so that didn’t work either. I spent the next 10 minutes trying to season my salad & finally had to resort to taking off the bottom (it was a plug, not the ones you screw off on the top) & using my hands.
After I was done, it took me another minute or two to clean my hands with napkins & water from my water glass.
The food was about a 2.5 out of 5 for me.
The beef carpaccio was all vinegar. They shredded way too much parmigiana cheese on the meat so all I could taste was the cheese & vinegar.
The waitress told me the lamb chops were really good, but for me they had no taste at all. I could have ordered one of their numerous fish dishes, but I went with her suggestion instead. Then again, who knows if the fish would have been any better.
It took FOREVER for me to get my food. Even getting my initial caffe latte took over 20 minutes & if you think it was because they were busy, think again.
I don’t know how many tables there in the front of the restaurant (I saw maybe one table filled at the front), but in the patio in the back, there was me & one other couple.
The food of course took a long time as well. Even with me reading a book I was antsy waiting & of course hungry.
The waitress was pleasant, but when you have to ask where your coffee is & she’s not observant about what is going on with your salt shaker, you know she’s not a real waitress.
The owner decided to retire, so last I heard he was selling the restaurant night club. He’s tried to sell it before & hasn’t, so he never retired.
I heard it’s an expat who owns it, but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to quality of food, there are plenty of restaurants back home that are terrible.
I don’t know if he sold it or not, I know they weren’t getting lots of offers.
They also don’t know how to market properly. They are situated out of the way on some back street where there’s no foot traffic, so unless you know it’s there, you aren’t getting there.
It’s a shame, because I really love the concept.
Michelle