Maito Restaurante — Restaurant in San Francisco

It's taken a while to decide whether or not to write this review but as someone who has eaten at many, many fine dining restaurants in Panama (I was a travel agent for several years) I think it's important to share our experience. We did bring it up to the management first, and tried to resolve there, but did not have any resolution.

I brought my grandmother, mother, and husband here as a treat since I was showing them around the country, and this was our final night/special event we had planned.

We bought the tasting menu + cocktails and between four people spent nearly $500, so we invested enough into this experience to expect something much better than we received.

Main issues:

• Do not go here if you have dietary requirements * We reserved months in advance and speak fluent Spanish; we were clear about 3 out of 4 of us having pescatarian diets (zero pork, poultry, or beef) and checked when we were seated that the staff knew. The first course was a delicious local Panamanian stew made from slow-roasted chicken and vegetables.....which one person loved. However, we were served what tasted like ordinary vegetable broth, with no story or presentation around it.

The defining experience of all of this was the gnocchi course (2/3 of the way through the experience). It was served with strips of dried pork (which could have been easily removed; not cooked in), When we told the waiter, he took them right away, leaving 1 person to eat alone while we waited about 10 minutes. Then, we were served gnocchi....AGAIN with meat on top! The waiter apologized, took the plates right away, and eventually brought a bottle of wine "for the wait". To our surprise/shock.....they proceeded to bring out the next course and presented it/acted like nothing had happened?? We asked why 3/4 of us were not served our pasta course and they said it messed up the timing in the kitchen and since we had accepted the wine, there would be no discount or alternative way to make up for it. If given the chance we would have much preferred to remove the meat ourselves and have a filling meal, but this service totally baffled us and ruined the following courses.

Very inconsistent portions. A "composed bite" is one thing, but multiple bite-size courses was a major disappointment, especially since the best dishes were the smallest. The larger dishes were flat, lacking depth of flavor, and did not at all feel like the standard for a "top" restaurant. The fish was overcooked, and desperately in need of salt, and 3 of the courses were dessert - which happened to be the best ones, but felt very unbalanced. One of those was coffee, which was fun to learn about, but having caffeine at 8pm was not ideal.

The "experience": hearing the stories behind each course was a big part of the tasting course. Unfortunately, our waiter did not speak great English and we struggled to understand most of it.

Service: we felt "off" about the whole dinner after our experience and found it difficult to enjoy the rest of the night. When asked about our experience, we let them know that being refused one of our courses was a very negative experience. After dessert, the waiter asked if we wanted a free appetizer to make up for it...... which we declined since it was late, we already had dessert, and we just wanted to leave at that point.

Sadly, we left feeling like we had been taken advantage of and frustrated that our "big" night had been spoiled by poor communication, and less than ideal food.

The good:

We really did want to love this place, and were optimistic for every course. The flavors in some of the smaller ones were delicious (best we've had? no...but still very good!)

The corn dessert was the one of the best I've had anywhere, and if it weren't for our experience, is the kind of dish I would have loved to come back for.

Panama City has an amazing food scene, and there are many options. For us, Maito wasn't one of them, but we hope they can learn from this and either refuse to accommodate special diets, or do so...

We’ve eaten at Maito before and the food has been very good but this time we tried the tasting menu and wine pairing and we thought it was spectacular. The tasting menu showcased - very succinctly- why Maito is #100 on the World’s Best Restaurant List and #6 on the Latin America list.

The tasting menu was seven savory courses and two dessert courses - and every dish was fabulous. The sommelier did an excellent job of pairing the 7 courses with 6 wines and one sake and dessert was complemented by a very aromatic cup of geisha coffee.

Bread and butter was first. The bread was buttery, flaky profiterole-style small buns accompanied by saril butter. The saril gave the butter a nice tartness and the combo of that tartness with creaminess of the butter and richness of the bun was excellent.

The first dish was sancocho. The chicken was smoked with nance wood and that gave the soup a profound and wonderful flavor and aroma. It was superb.

Next was a papaya mango salad (made with ripe and green papaya) flavored with ajo chili. This dish was a terrific sweet and spicy combo of flavors. The wine pairing was a crisp and minerally white from Spain. (See the wine picture for the specifics).

Third was a kampachi dish done chombasia style - a combination of Asian, Afro, Caribbean flavors. This dish had some heat and was nicely flavored with ginger and chives. We ate it on top of the super crispy patacones that came with it - which provided a nice contrast in textures. The wine pairing was an Australian Riesling which was a perfect pairing for the spiciness in this dish.

Next was a shrimp dumpling. For us this was a super star dish. It was a fusion of Afro Panamanian and Chinese cuisine. The dumpling was cooked to perfection- the shrimp was perfectly cooked and the dough had just the right amount of al dente It was served in a curry sauce that was slightly spicy and had notes of anise. The sauce was amazing. Our only suggestion here was the dish needed “a wiper” for the sauce because we didn’t want to leave a drop on the plate. This was paired with a rose from Greece that had a lovely flowery aroma.

The next dish was also stellar - and somewhat of a surprise as it was ñame. It was steamed and then barbecued and served with a sauce of lychee, ají chombo and ron abuelo. This sauce was out of this world delicious.

Then came a grilled langostino - once again perfectly cooked - with curry and ginger flavors. This was paired with a sake which didn’t work for me, but my husband enjoyed the combination.

The final savory dish was kampachi done chombasia style; the coconut, chili and cilantro flavors were wonderful. It came with coconut rice made with coconut oil, and it had a very prominent - and quite tasty - coconut flavor that blended well with the coconut flavors in the fish.

The first of the desserts was geisha focused. It included a cream of geisha topped with a thin, crispy layer of caramel. The creamy-crunchy texture combination worked very well and as did the flavor combos. The flavors and aroma from the geisha coffee (which was beautifully made table side) wrapped everything together.

The second dessert I thought was another highlight of the meal. It was a corn fritter filled with a local cheese and a scoop of ice cream made from the local cheese - both served in a sweet sauce made from corn and spiced with some pepper. It was another outstanding combination. In particular I thought the sauce was fantastic. The geisha coffee also complemented this dish nicely.

We dined on the terrace. There were a lot of fans so we found it comfortable. The tables are also quite far apart so and it was quiet. Service was generally quite attentive. Our only quibble was that we had to chase them in the beginning for drinks and the sometimes took a bit too long to refill water glasses. But all the servers and sommelier did a wonderful job of describing the dishes and wine pairings.

We thought this was one of the best meals we’ve ever...

There's an annual list called: "50 Best Restaurants" that ranks the best restaurants around the world, divided by world, continents, and countries.

Maito was selected as: "the best restaurant in Panama", "N°6 best restaurant in Latin America 2023" and has held the position of "best" throughout the years in this list.

We had high but justified expectations before coming to Panama. On our last night in the city, we got a table at 7pm.

It only took us minutes to realize that the decision from this UK List was quite premature.

It's not unrealistic to expect that an establishment of any kind, especially in this industry, must take EVERYTHING into account if they're to be called the best.

In the case of restaurants, it's not enough to have good food, but service, ambience, colours, taste, words, smells, music, and everything from arriving to leaving needs to be equally aligned with the quality its intending to provide.

The first thing you see in Maito is an ordinary parking lot. You walk to what looks like an empty plant nursery, which could've been an amazing idea, but the way Maito has been put together fails to impress and provide the right atmosphere to experience the "best restaurant in Panama".

There's a feeling of cheapness, ordinariness reflected in the bar, the chairs, the colours, that make you feel you're in those restaurants bus drivers stop to let people go to the bathroom in long drives.

We had a table right next to the parking lot. Every time a car arrives, you're blinded by their lights for a minute until they leave.

It's quite spacious, which could've been a good thing, but failed to provide an intimate environment. The lighting was off, the space arranged poorly. Can't remember the music.

Servers seemed to be running around stressed. Our server from Madrid was good. Our asian server, who checked on us, seemed a bit stressed. The buzzer who placed the cuttlery and napking on our table (which should've been placed before we arrived) placed it carelessly.

Drinks were ok. The bread on the house with hibiscus butter was tasty. We ordered the Chili Bo Wonton, which was heavy on salt and soy flavour. They tasted fine, but no 'Wow' on them. Have had better and cheaper store bought.

For mains, we had the insignia dish, the "Pesca Chombasia." Our server told us about this whole "Chombasia"concept. A culinary concept "created" by the chef to "express the multicultural identity of Panama with a mix of afro, asia and Caribbean flavours that CHALLENGE the traditional.

The fish was well cooked. But the sauce tasted like, again, store bought Schezwan Sauce.

Had the Langostino on Papaya Sauce. Langostino was well cooked. Sauce was tasty. But again, average taste, which for the price, is unacceptable.

I like desserts after dinner, even on full stomach, but when our server was bringing the dessert menu, I said I was full and just the bill, please.

It's important to reiterate that the food wasn't bad. Everything was well cooked. This is still an important step in Kitchens. But for the price, the hype, it wasn't worth it, and we we're disappointed with this experience.

Maybe our expectations were unrealistic. Maybe we failed to understand the concept of Chombasia, which after those Wonton, should've called Chomchina.

It's a big effort of a lot of people, chefs, "foodies", journalists to come with this list. It's also not unheard of many Owners pay to be in the list, pay to have a good spot, pay to be the best. In the same way parents pay to have their kids Karate Belt upgraded from White to Black. Wouldn't be surprised if this...