4 Best Restaurants in The Canal and Central Panama, Panama

In a colonial-style building on the road to Playa Coronado, this attractive restaurant serves a good variety of quality dishes. The menu changes daily, but always offers a good mix of meat and seafood dishes that feature a mix of Panamanian and international fare. There is invariably corvina (sea bass), langostinos (prawns), and grilled (rather expensive) USDA-certified beef, including a good burger. The ambiance—terra-cotta floors, ocher walls, and a high wooden-beams ceiling—is right out of the 19th century, except for the TV and ceiling fans.

Built out over the Chagres River, this open-air restaurant at the Gamboa Rainforest Resort is a great place to see turtles, fish, crocodiles, and waterfowl feeding in the hyacinth-laden water. If you travel with binoculars, you'll definitely want to bring them here, so that you can watch wildlife while you wait for your lunch. A small buffet is frequently available, but the à la carte selection is usually a better deal, with choices such as peacock bass in a mustard sauce, grouper topped with an avocado sauce and cheese, or the hearty, spicy fisherman's stew. Lighter items include Caesar salad, hamburgers, and quesadillas. It isn't Panama's best food, but it's good, and the view of the forest-hemmed Chagres River populated with grebes, jacanas, turtles, and other wildlife is worth the trip out here even if you have only a cup of tea.

This open-air restaurant, a short drive from the main road, is like something out of a fairy tale. There are stone floors, plants everywhere, goldfish ponds and a stream running between the tables; the food is pretty good, too. The ample menu ranges from traditional Panamanian dishes such as sancocho (chicken soup with tropical tubers) and corvina (sea bass) prepared various ways, to filet mignon and chicken cordon bleu—they spell it "gordon blue." There's a playground and a tiny menagerie in the back garden. They also rent rooms, but they're cramped, dark, and musty.