2 Best Restaurants in Panama Viejo, Panama City

Hidden on the fourth floor of the Evergreen Building, down the street from the Sheraton Panama, the Golden Unicorn is one of Panama's best Chinese restaurants. A Cantonese restaurant that serves some Mandarin and Szechuan dishes, its a popular weekend spot with families who gather around its large round tables and order enough dishes to fill the lazy Susan. The menu is as long as a novella, and is written in Chinese, Spanish, and English. You can't go wrong with dishes such as pollo salteado con setas (sautéed chicken and seta mushrooms), pato salteado con piña y jengibre (sautéed duck with pineapple and ginger), langostinos Yau Pau (prawns with mini vegetables), or the spicy Szechuan shrimp. They also serve dim sum, the traditional Chinese breakfast, starting at 7:30 am. The spacious dining room has walls of windows that afford ocean views, beyond the roof of the ATLAPA Convention Center.

This large, no-frills eatery on busy Vía Cincuentenaria is packed most weekends, as Panamanians arrive in droves for sizzling steaks and seafood, served with a salad and baked potato, at reasonable prices. Though the owner is Greek, there is very little Greek food on the menu. If he'd opened his restaurant in Chicago instead of Panama City, it would no doubt be called Jimmy's Grill, which is basically what the name means in Spanish. Its big draws are the steaks, but the extensive menu has a lot of good options, such as corvina al ajillo (sea bass with garlic), pulpo a la parrilla (grilled octopus), or sancocho (Panama's national dish, chicken soup with tropical tubers). Seating is available on the front terrace, for a view of the traffic, or in two large, air-conditioned dining rooms.