Puerto Rico Road Trip #3: La Ruta Lechonera

The third and final stop of our one-day road trip around Puerto Rico was La Ruta de Lechón, or the Pork Highway.

Lechón is roasted whole pork. It is cooked for hours over hot coals or an open flame, which makes the skin crispy while the meat remains tender and juicy. Lechón is typical of the Puerto Rican countryside. It is especially popular during the holiday season.

Lechoneras are restaurants that serve lechón. Most of them have a "cafeteria style" set-up.

I read about the Pork Highway before coming to Puerto Rico. It seemed so cool. I had to check it out. One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to eat local food.

The picture below shows the route from Ponce, the second stop of our day trip, to Santurce, a neighborhood of San Juan where we started in the morning and where we would end up at the end of the day because our apartment was there.

After the map is a picture from inside the car of what it looks like driving on a main highway in Puerto Rico.

We were driving north from Ponce to Santurce on Route 52. The Pork Highway is Route 184 in Cayey.

It's so cool! We drove on this windy road for nearly four miles and there truly were lechoneras everywhere on both sides of the road, some with seemingly amazing views from their balconies of valleys below and hills in the distance.

Ally read that Anthony Bourdain had visited Lechonera Los Piños and declared their roasted pork the best that he had ever had, so we decided that this one would be the lechonera where we would go.

Below, first is a menu. Then, you can see my plate of food. I ate lechón, rice, and yuca, a starchy root vegetable like a potato that grows underground from a cassava plant.

The orange juice in the picture above is jugo de acerola. 

Acerola is a cherry-like fruit that grows on a shrub, or small tree, in warm/tropical areas of the Americas. Other names for this fruit include Guarani Cherry, Barbados Cherry, West Indian cherry, cerecita (little cherry), and manzanita (little apple).

Below is a picture of the fruit growing whole on its tree.