Restaurant Pura Vida — Restaurant in La Fortuna

After three days of eating traditional Costa Rican food we were ready for a break and drove by this "Chinese" restaurant and decided to give a try. As I forgot to recharge my phone I was unable to check reviews until later. My bad! First we were the only people here during lunch, which worried us. The food that arrived looked like slop on a plate. All the meat (one chicken and one pork dish) had a funky gamey taste. The sweet and sour chicken was literally all breading with the tiniest bit of chicken grizzle inside. And the chop suey we ordered was a brown soup of thick corn starch hiding veggies that didn't look or taste fresh. We ended eating just a couple bites of our food and left three full plates. We asked for check and although obvious we didn't eat, the owner never questioned us if anything was wrong. Oh and they didn't serve rice with the food and when asked said they charged additional for rice! Probably the worst...

There needs to be a zero option in this numerical rating scale but I will begrudgingly assign a zero. On Google Maps this location on the outskirts of La Fortuna is labeled only as "Chinese Food", hence the difficulty in correlating it with its entry on TripAdvisor with all these deservedly rotten reviews. As so many have already stated, the only reason anyone eats the slop served there is because the parking lot is bound to be empty, hence the ease of parking in such a busy tourist town. As a hotel, its TripAdvisor rating is 55th out of 62 (only 6 hotels are rated worse than this one). That should be a HUGE clue as to the caliber of the food, as well. According to TripAdvisor there are 172 dining options in La Fortuna. If the Pura Vida Restaurant were to be listed as a standalone restaurant, it would undoubtedly be...

So there's a lot of bad reviews, and we went anyway, because the friend of ours was craving for something non Costa Rican and Asian. I'm Chinese and had serious doubts about the quality of food in the only chinese restaurant in this area...how good could it be with no competition around?|Well, it wasn't bad, which was surprising (ergo the 4 stars). We had fried rice, fried beef noodles, stir fry beef tongue (must be the central america influence), and shrimp with vegetables. It worked for us, looking for something different to eat. Don't order the food that are made for...