Black Star Line
The smell of Caribbean spices, bubbling stews and barbequed meats wafts out onto the corner where you'll find locals chatting with friends after Sunday mass on the steps outside the Black Star Line restaurant. Port of Limon's renowned restaurant is named after the Black Star Line shipping company incorporated by Marcus Garvey, who aided African diaspora during the Back-to-Africa movement in the early 1920s.
read more closeInside the teal, two-story colonial style façade, patrons will find the trappings of a typical Caribbean family-owned Costa Rican restaurant, known as a soda. Glass cases display cookies and empanadas, beside them sits a jar of pickled peppers, onions and carrots. Another display at the front of the restaurant glows with a heating lamp warming pieces of fried chicken among other golden tidbits.
Today, the Taylor family runs the 80-year old Black Star Line restaurant. Together with his sisters, Alberto Taylor has spent the last eight years serving up traditional Caribbean-style classics like the Black Star Line, $10, made with marinated ox tail, chicken in coconut sauce, chicharrones (pork rinds), fried mackerel, coconut-milk rice and beans, fried cassava and plantains. The restaurant also makes the local Limon favorite: Bochinche casado, $7, made with a choice of meat (beef, pork, chicken of fish), spaghetti, black beans and fried plantains.
Ambiance
Just three blocks from Vargas Park in downtown Limon, visitors will encounter the teal, wood-slats of Black Star Line's exteriors. Inside guests will find a prototypical soda (Costa Rican-style family-owned restaurant) with a few tables and a cashier.
Service
Local servers and a family-owned business.
Price
Entrees $6-$7
Hours
7 a.m. – 10 p.m. daily
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