Lan Tien is a new asian restaurant in the downtown Moravia area that opened it's doors less then a month ago.
I first saw this restaurant as I was visiting a friend in Moravia and thought that it had a clean and distinct look that appealed to my senses.
As my wife and I approached the door, a buzzer sounded to let us in and I must admit that the palce was impeccably clean with a nice modern asian decor.
The service was prompt, friendly and courteous because as soon as we sat down, the waiter immediately came to our table to take our drink order and he was very patient with us as my wife had problems making up her mind as to what to order and hanged her order a couple of times. The waiter, smiled throughout the whole ordeal never gave the any signs of being annoyed at all.
The food came in a reasonable amount of time and I ordered the "sopa de fide con carne de res" along with a side dish of Taiwanese style kimchi.
I had actually wanted the koren style kimchi as I want something spicy while the Taiwanese kimchi is more of a sweet type of kimchi.
Unfortunately, they did not have any korean one so I had to settle for the Taiwanese version.
In terms of taste, the soup was good but not stupendous. Perhaps it was because I had expected the noodles to be more of the pho or ramen type. I do have to say that the broth was excellent.
My wife on the other hand was torn between getting sushi or the fried fish. In the end, she ordered the fish plate with rice. She was not impressed with the fish but passed it off as acceptable since it had some nice asian spices to it.
To be fair to the fish, the presentation, which was very Japanese in style was clean and orderly.
She said that if we ever go back out there again, she will order a plate of sushi as they had quite an assortment of sushi available on the menu from the usual maki to the salmon roe type.
Between the both of us, we ordered a plate of steamed pork dumplings as we wanted to try out an appetizer. This was probably the best part of the meal for me as the dumplings or "empanadas chino" were very tasty. It looked like the dumplings had first been steamed and then fried a bit to give it a nice crust to the bottom.
In general, the filling of the dumpling tasted quite fresh like it had been made that same day and had a perfectly balance ingredients to give the dumpling a nice bold flavor.
Overall, the dining experience was great but the food, while good was not great but still a decent bargain for the price as the whole meal cost us around $22. So I give Lan Tien Restaurant a 3.5 out of a possible 5.
If you are interested in visiting this restaurant here are the directions:
Lan Tien Restaurant:
Frente al BAC San Jose, casa esquinera amarilla Moravia
Horarios: Lunes-Domingo 12:00-22:00 | Martes18:00-22:00
Telephone: 506 2236-6035
Richard Able is one of our frequent guest author who has been living in Costa Rica for over 10 years with his wife Lucy. Richard has written many articles about Living in Costa Rica and his world travels. He can be contacted at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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