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Costa Rica's nine-course meal in the sky

High above Costa Rica's cloud forest,hi-lo dice progressive San Lucas Treetop Dining Experience offers a nine-course tasting menu inspired by the country's diverse provinces – combining fine dining with immersive storytelling.

It takes a long, winding road and a leap of the imagination to reach the San Lucas Treetop Dining Experience, a fine dining restaurant perched high above the above the misty cloud forest floor in Monteverde; one of Costa Rica's most biodiverse regions.

Hidden behind a tall, discrete gate and suspended on elevated platforms, San Lucas feels like a deep forest secret. But as soon as diners cross the tree-shrouded threshold, the mystery is slowly unveiled – signalled first by a large map displaying the country's seven provinces and some of its islands, bearing the message: A tribute to Costa Rica.

A narrow wooden footbridge, raised some 10m (33ft) off the ground, leads to eight private glass dining cabins overlooking the canopy. Each is enclosed by floor-to-ceiling windows, offering views of rolling clouds, distant mountains and at the Gulf of Nicoya, from where the restaurant sources much of its seafood

San Lucas's sky-scraping design draws inspiration from the hanging bridges and zip lines that made Monteverde a famed ecotourism hub.

"Monteverde is synonymous with fog, hanging bridges and being above the forest," said Diego Valverde, one of San Lucas's owners. Valverde, a civil engineer as well as a hospitality entrepreneur, also devised the restaurant's concept: an innovative space where food, nature and adventure combine. "The platforms are an extension of that essence, and San Lucas wants to capture that same feeling of being suspended in the air, surrounded by leaves, breeze and the forest’s nocturnal melodies."

Each cabin contains just one wooden table in order to keep the focus on the view, and my afternoon sitting unfolded across daylight, sunset and into darkness. At 17:00, the waiter, Carlos Marenco, arrived carrying a brown vintage suitcase. Dressed in dark green cargo pants and a cream button shirt with large pockets, he looked more like he was ready to go searching for poisonous frogs in the jungle than serve food.

"Today, we are going to do a gastronomic journey around the country," he said. "In this journey, you will need luggage, a passport and a guide."

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He handed over a San Lucas "passport", which included another map of the country with background about each province, and opened the suitcase to reveal an adventurous assortment of appetisers: taro root chips; a cocoa butter sphere containing agua de sapo (a drink made with sugar cane, lime and ginger); mushroom-shaped butter; and a shot of chicheme (a traditional Indigenous fermented purple corn drink).

Over the next two hours, Marenco presented a nine-course tasting menu, each dish paying homage to a different province. With each course, he added insight – from local dish nicknames to stories of how geography shaped cuisine – enriching the menu with personal and cultural context.

I'd requested the vegetarian menu and began my journey with a punchy ceviche made with green apple and chayote – an alternative to the fish and piangua (black-shelled molluscs) dish – that represented Puntarenas, the province with the longest Pacific coastline. A crispy quinoa croquette atop a delicate coconut milk foam arrived at dusk, the sauce's spicy, aromatic flavours inspired by Limón, Costa Rica’s Caribbean province. Cartago was depicted with a smoky potato dish – the province's main agricultural product – topped with "ash" made from burnt onion powder, referencing its volcanic landscape.

San Lucas opened in 2019, but the project was years in the making. Valverde consulted with multiple experts, including Alejandra Brenes, a psychologist who specialises in gastronomic consumer behaviour and the neuroscience of sensory experiences. For San Lucas, she researched how people react to different stimuli in order to curate the experience for diners and generate curiosity. "For example, temperature, the choice of plates, the way the food is placed on them, the music, the dish's texture, it all affects our perception of flavour," she said, describing the end result as "a small gastronomic adventure park".

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Behind the menu is chef José Daniel Hernández, who specialises in Costa Rican cuisine but pushes traditional dishes in inventive directions. He designed, tested and refined all the dishes, travelling with his team to each province, trying local fare and consulting with regional chefs.

"When you make traditional Costa Rican food, it's difficult not to fall into very simple or homemade grandmother style of cooking," Hernández told me. "Trying to take those classic flavours to a higher and more elegant level is a challenge, and that's where creativity comes in." For him, this menu is an opportunity to highlight Costa Rica's rich gastronomy and to leave a positive lasting impression on his guests.

The culinary journey continued on to San José, the capital, which was elegantly reimagined as a modern take on the traditional casado (literally translated as "a married man"), a popular dish that typically includes meat or fish, rice and beans, plantains and vegetables. Heredia, the smallest province with the largest farmer's market, was rendered in a delicate pineapple, coconut and lime sorbet in a pond of coconut water and garnished with colourful edible flowers. And finally, from Monteverde itself: a magic trick involving fire and a wooden pot with some coffee, chocolate and banana petit fours hidden underneath a vibrant tropical plant. The finish was dramatic, delicious and unexpected; much like Costa Rica's vast gastronomic landscape.

While the meal was the main event, it would be hard to imagine the San Lucas experience without the surrounding forest – a view that decades ago was markedly different.

At the height of Costa Rica's deforestation crisis in the 1980s, nearly half the country's forest cover had been lost. Monteverde, where large sections of land had been cleared for cattle and agriculture, was part of that decline – until residents, biologists and international supporters banded together to protect its cloud forest. The Monteverde Conservation League, founded in 1986, helped accelerate the recovery efforts, including land purchases that led to the creation of the Children's Eternal Rainforest, now Costa Rica's largest private reserve.

These grassroots conservation efforts laid the foundation for the region's transformation into a world-renowned ecotourism destination. And now, San Lucas has laid the foundation for Monteverde to become a gastronomic destination as well.

"We want diners to leave with a deep connection with Costa Rica," said Valverde.

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