Mojitos and Guinea Pig – Fine Dining in Quito

By Geek Goddess on January 13, 2014 • ( 1 )

Early last year, I took a trip to Quito, the Galapagos Islands, and the Amazon rainforest (some links to blogs about those trips are here and here, and here).

(This photo of La Boca del Lobo is courtesy of TripAdvisor)

I was flipping through photos, and recalled the last meal we had in Quito before getting on our OMG early flights the next morning. Looking for a place that was NOT the hotel (awful food), and that wasn’t the ubiquitous grilled meat service, we relied on my handy international Internet connection and Trip Advisor to locate a highly recommended place a few blocks from the main “nice but touristy” area Mariscal District. After locating the restaurant (name since forgotten), we discovered it to be closed.

This was not the place, either.

No signs, but not open at 6 pm for dinner. Sigh. We started walking back towards our hotel, and passed “La Boca del Lobo”. While the garish colors didn’t look particularly inviting, the large friendly English-language sign that read “$6 Mojito pitcher” drew us like Gollum to a ring. There were six of us, so it was like FATE!

I don’t know if I can honestly recommend this place. Like much food in Quito, it was a bit heavy and bland for my taste. Even though the place was almost empty, the service was slow, but the conversation was awesome. So we stayed. Because $6 mojito pitchers. We tried a dish of cuy (sometimes spelt cuey) but not on a spit.

Cuy. Allegedly.

Hey, at least I tried it.

This cuy was decently chopped up and embedded in fried fritters, because you can eat almost anything if it’s been breaded and fried and drowned in hot sauce. There were also appetizers called wolf something, which the waiter swore were REAL WOLF but the name of the restaurant made us all a bit skeptical of that claim.

The fun part, other than the $6 mojito pitchers, was the menu, which had close to 50 pages (which Zac called “The S&M menu”):

Menu, La Boca del Lobo

We had a great time at dinner that night (and special thanks to Chris for that). All those people in our group who went home early? YOU COULD HAVE HAD $6 MOJITO PITCHERS! Totally worth the extra hotel, excursions, and meals.

This photo of La Boca del Lobo is courtesy of TripAdvisor