The Green Room is a very special place in Jaco Costa Rica that exemplifies the natural feel of what Costa Rica’s habitat is with food. Whether it’s describing the locals who frequent this place, the wonderful staff, or the natural organic locally grown food, you’re going to have a nice experience here.

The restaurant serves upscale comfort, and gourmet food without all the fuss of fine dining. They work with several organic farms, and artisan food producers in the area and throughout the country, in order to take local flavors with international cooking techniques to bring you a truly unique dining experience. You can have everything from fancy gourmet burgers and sandwiches to upscale dishes you’d see at any fine dining restaurant.  Now lets look at some of the food, so you can get a better feel of what I’m talking about.

Here we had by far the best open faced pulled pork sandwich with jalapeno cornbread with a pineapple coleslaw and passion fruit BBQ. Best pulled pork sandwich I’ve ever eaten. What made it so delicious was the jalapeno cornbread bun at the bottom that you can’t see, but it gave the dish a different twist of flavor that you normally don’t find in a traditional pulled pork sandwich.

The Bacon and Gorgonzola Mac N Cheese was a winner for sure. It was very creamy, and had nice pieces of fat bacon to give the mac some texture with a nice fatty flavor.

This was a different style of ceviche that had a lot of fruit with it along with the plantain chips that were a little bit different than most ceviche plates I’ve in the past. The fish is very fresh, and the dish has a very nice fruity feel, which is a different style of ceviche than what I’m used to.

This Mahi mahi with chopped mango and coconut chutney sauce has been my favorite dishes since I first visited The Green room in 2014. They changed the presentation from the original look, but the flavor is the same. It is has a delicious succulent taste on the crust of the fish, which goes extremely well with the chopped mangos on top.

These spicy pork ribs were some of the best ribs I’ve ever had. The spicy flavor of the sauce was just enough bite to mix well with the sweet flavor that blended really nicely with the crispy skin on the rib.

If you’re in the mood for a an amazing portobello mushroom burger with all the trimmings, you can usually find something like this one on the menu. We shared this one along with the Tuna burger that you’ll see below as well. Both of them were amazing for a lunch meal. We couldn’t’ decide which one so we went with both.

This is the Spicy cajun tuna burger with a ginger-wasabi, aoili guacamole, and pineapple BBQ sauce. This is definitely a different style burger with fresh tuna to go with a lot of tasty condiments when you want to try something different

While we were there in August of 2015, we enjoyed a great beer festival party there with a bunch of the local brewers in Costa Rica. We really enjoyed talking with the vendors and hearing about the process of how they make their beer and what flavor profile they were going for. In Costa Rica, I would describe their beer style as a very hoppy fruity style to their beer. If you like Blue Moon or Shock Top, most of these beers would likely impress you. That seemed to be the consistency that most of the vendors were going for in the increasing brewery movement in Costa Rica. Jaco is a small surf town, but the people really come together to make a nice community. Here are a few pics of the some of the locals and the brewery companies at the beer festival in August of 2015. We had such a great time.

Don’t let me forget one other important thing that makes The Green Room an unforgettable place and that is the art that surrounds the walls of the restaurant. They have a lot of local artists that sell their work and it is always unique to see what they have on the walls whether it is from local photographers or from the beautiful oil paintings. Every Saturday they have local artists performing there while you are dining, and you can routinely hear the sounds of CoNe Zamora who is a local singer that has a variety of his own songs as well as great classics he covers. He has a very soft voice that is very soothing and helps to create the relaxed ambience The Green Room sets for you while you enjoy the fresh food from the natural environment of the rainforest in Costa Rica. If you’re in Jaco, make sure to get a meal or two here. You won’t regret it for a second, and you’ll likely not want to go anywhere else after that since their menu has a pretty good variety. I can’t wait to return the next time I visit Jaco Costa Rica. See you there!