Where should I eat in Monteverde, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Monteverde's eating is shaped by two things: a long day inside a protected area, and an unusual dairy history. The Costa Rica Tourism Board's listing for the reserve states that visitors may bring their own food and drinks, that alcohol is neither served nor allowed, and that credit cards are accepted. With a 7:00 opening, a 16:00 close and a suggested six-to-seven-hour hike, the sensible pattern is breakfast in town, a packed lunch on the trail, and dinner afterwards.

The dairy is what makes the area distinctive. Monteverde was settled in 1951 by Quakers from the United States, and cheesemaking — not tourism — was the community's founding economy. Local cheese still turns up on menus here in a way it does not elsewhere in Costa Rica, and the settlement's existence is the direct reason the forest above it was protected: the reserve was created on 6 October 1972 and is owned by the Centro Científico Tropical, covering 4,125 hectares.

For the rest, eat Costa Rican highland food. A casado at a soda in Santa Elena is the standard lunch plate. Agua dulce, hot water or milk with unrefined cane sugar dissolved in it, suits the cool evenings at this elevation better than cold drinks do. Coffee grown on the Pacific slopes below Monteverde is the local crop, and it is drunk short. Fruit frescos are made to order from whatever is in season.

Santa Elena, the town serving the reserve, sits in cloud for part of most days and its restaurants run to wood stoves and closed windows rather than terraces — the evening temperature here is a different proposition from the Costa Rican lowlands an hour's drive below. The road between town and the reserve gate is unpaved in stretches.

The reserve's permission to bring your own food is the practical centerpiece of a day here, because almost everything else about it is restricted: bags are checked on entry, alcohol is prohibited outright, service animals are admitted but other pets are not, and there is no first aid station on site. There are also no free admission days or hours, so budgeting a Monteverde day means budgeting an entrance fee as well as a meal — the tourism board puts non-resident adult admission at roughly US$25 to US$26, with student, senior and child discounts.

• Before 7:00 — Breakfast and coffee in Santa Elena, early enough to be at the gate when it opens.
• On the trail — The lunch you carried in, since the reserve's own rules allow it and the hike it suggests runs six to seven hours.
• After 16:00 — A casado and agua dulce in town, where the cool evening makes the hot drink worth ordering.

Nothing alcoholic can be carried into or bought inside the reserve, which rules out a celebratory end to a long walk until you are back in town. Travelers flying in from certain South American or African countries must show a yellow fever vaccination certificate at the border, and the State Department's advisory for Costa Rica, issued on crime grounds, asks for increased caution. Leaving the country by air carries a US$29 departure tax, usually bundled into the ticket. The approach road is slow, so a late dinner and an early gate the next morning do not combine well.

See the when-to-visit answer in this group for the season and the value of the 7:00 opening, and the things-to-do answer for the trails and species the reserve actually publishes.