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

Puerto Rican cooking divides along plantain lines. Green plantain fried twice gives tostones; green plantain fried and then pounded with garlic gives mofongo, served as a dome with broth or stuffed with shrimp, pork or crab. Ripe plantain goes sweet and becomes amarillos. Nothing else on the island does as much work in a kitchen, and a first-time visitor who orders only one dish should make it mofongo.

Two trips out of Old San Juan repay the effort more than anything inside the walls. East of the city, along the coast at Loíza, the Piñones kiosks sell fritters from open counters — alcapurrias, a yuca-and-plantain fritter filled with seasoned meat, and bacalaítos, flat salt-cod fritters fried to the size of a dinner plate. South, up into the Cordillera Central at Guavate in Cayey, open-sided lechoneras turn whole pigs over wood for lechón asado. Both are an hour or so from the old town and neither keeps restaurant hours.

For drinks, the island's coffee is grown in the central mountains, not on the coast, and comes to the table small and strong. Piraguas — shaved ice pressed into a paper cone and doused in fruit syrup — are a street purchase rather than a dessert menu item, and are at their most useful in a city where the warmest months on record have averaged 86.1°F (30.1°C).

Practically, Puerto Rico is a US territory: the currency is the US dollar and US citizens arrive without a passport, so there is no money-changing or visa friction between landing and lunch.

At Piñones the kitchens back onto a mangrove shoreline and the frying counters open straight onto the sand road, so the smell of hot oil and the smell of the mangrove arrive together. Up at Guavate the air is ten-odd degrees cooler than the coast and smells of wood smoke rather than salt — the elevation is the whole reason the roast-pork trade settled there.

Plan meals around the forts, not the reverse. Public access to Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristóbal runs 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and the $10 pass that covers both is valid for 24 hours — so the natural pattern is forts in the morning, a long lunch, and the second fort the following morning on the same ticket. On Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day the national historic site is closed altogether, which makes those the days to spend on the Guavate road instead.

• Breakfast — Coffee from the central highlands, taken short and black, in the old city before the nine o'clock fort opening.
• Weekday lunch — Mofongo in Old San Juan, inside the World Heritage district inscribed in 1983 under criterion (vi).
• Weekend afternoon — Piñones for fritters, or Guavate for lechón; the roast-pork places are busiest on Saturdays and Sundays.

Both of the eating destinations worth the drive are outside San Juan and need a car or a ride, and neither is a dinner option — the kiosks and lechoneras are daytime and early-evening trades. Between June 1 and November 30, the Atlantic hurricane season as defined by NOAA's National Hurricane Center, heavy afternoon rain can shut open-air counters with no notice. Nothing at Piñones is sheltered.

Use the when-to-visit answer in this group to choose a month, and the things-to-do answer to order the two forts across a single 24-hour pass with a long lunch in between.