San José eats in layers: wholesale fruit markets behind the cathedral, tin-plate cantinas pouring free bocas with every beer, and a Barrio Escalante strip where chefs rebuild Bribri and Chorotega cooking. Three days, one valley's larder.
The city's wholesale produce market, packed into four blocks behind the Mercado Central since the 1930s. Stalls stack mamón chino, pejibaye, guanábana and sacks of Tarrazú beans. Roughly 06:00–17:00, Monday to Saturday.
Facing La Sabana park since 1953, this soda serves the archetypal casado — rice, black beans, sweet plantain, cabbage salad and meat on one plate — plus the churchill, shaved ice with condensed milk and syrup.
Calle 33 and its side streets hold around forty restaurants, bakeries and bars over six blocks — the densest eating strip in the country, built inside 1950s family houses. Al Mercat, Product C and Kalú anchor the corners.
A food hall on Calle 21 gathering a dozen independent counters under one roof — Costa Rican tapas, ceviche, arepas and craft taps — inside a converted warehouse in the La California district, with long communal tables.
Open-corner restaurant at Avenida 2 and Calle 15, hung with dried plantain leaves, serving gallo pinto on banana leaf with hand-pressed tortillas palmeadas and coffee dripped through a cloth chorreador. Open around the clock.
Chef Pablo Bonilla's project rebuilding pre-Columbian Costa Rican cooking with Bribri, Boruca and Chorotega growers — chirraca resin, ayote, pejibaye and native cacao worked into a set menu. Booking ahead is required.
Specialty bar on Calle 33 pouring single-origin lots from Tarrazú, Los Santos and Brunca through V60, chemex and chorreador side by side, with tasting flights that set washed against honey and natural processing.
Dining rooms inside an 1890s Victorian mansion on Calle 30, applying French technique to Costa Rican produce — sea bass in coconut, palmito, and the house Grano de Oro pie built on coffee cream and meringue.
Saturday organic market at the Aranjuez sports ground, roughly 07:00–12:30, with some eighty producers selling shade-grown coffee, raw cacao, artisan cheese and kombucha while back stalls cook breakfast casados to order.
Calle 9 runs south from Avenida 2 under a Chinese arch installed in 2012, lined with chifa kitchens, dim sum counters and pedestrian carts selling elote asado, pinchos and bags of plantain chips fried on the spot.
Corner cantina at Avenida Central and Calle 9 that has run more or less continuously for a century, where an Imperial still arrives with a boca on a tin plate — chifrijo, chicharrón or picadillo de arracache.
Taproom of one of the country's early microbreweries, running a dozen Costa Rican craft lines — red ales, Belgian-style tripels and guava sours — alongside bar food built on chifrijo, yuca fries and chicharrones.