Açaí in Panama

It's the first question people ask once they hear the price: if açaí is a tropical fruit and Panama is a tropical country, why isn't it grown here?

The commercial açaí palm is Euterpe oleracea, and it grows in the floodplains of northern Brazil, mostly in the state of Pará. It's also produced in parts of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. There's no commercial cultivation in Panama: all the açaí eaten in the country arrives imported and frozen.

It isn't that the climate wouldn't allow it. It's that the chain it takes — the palms, the harvest, the pulping and the cold — doesn't exist here, and that chain takes decades to build.

Açaí is a small berry, mostly seed. Each fruit yields a thin layer of pulp around the pit, and that pulp starts breaking down within hours of harvest.

That's why açaí never travels as fruit. It's pulped and frozen at origin, usually the same day, and what crosses the continent is frozen pulp in blocks or bags.

If you've ever seen fresh açaí at a Panamanian market, it wasn't açaí.

The pulp arrives in a refrigerated container and stays frozen until it's served. Between pulping at origin and your bowl there are several links — shipping, customs, warehouse, distributor, shop — and the temperature has to hold at every one.

That's the whole game. A break in the cold chain doesn't always show: pulp can be refrozen and look normal, but it loses color, texture and flavor.

That's why good açaí is recognizable on sight. Deep purple, almost black, with the texture of dense ice cream, means the chain held. A pale or greyish color, or a watery consistency, says otherwise.

A good share of the açaí sold in the region arrives with sugar, guaraná syrup, or both already blended into the pulp. It stretches further, costs less and is easier to like at first bite, because a palate used to ice cream finds it tastier.

Pure açaí tastes different. It isn't sweet on its own: it has an earthy backbone, closer to cacao than to fruit. The sweetness in a well-made bowl comes from the fruit on top and from frozen banana giving it body.

If you're comparing two bowls and one costs noticeably less, the difference is usually in the base, not the size.

Organic certification applies to the pulp, not to the bowl. It's a seal about how the fruit was harvested and processed at origin, verified by a third party.

At LiU we use USDA certified organic açaí pulp, pure and unsweetened. That's what we can state precisely.

What we don't say is that the bowl is organic. The granola, the toppings and the nut butters come from other suppliers and aren't certified. We'd rather be exact: the base is, the full plate isn't.

Açaí arrived in Panama only a few years ago and it's now sold at several spots around the city. We're in Costa del Este, inside the Indoor Padel Club, on Calle Villanueva.

A few things worth knowing wherever you buy it:

• Ask whether the base has sugar. It's the biggest difference between one açaí and another, and almost nobody puts it on the menu.
• Look at it before you eat it. Color and texture tell you how it traveled.
• Eat it right away. In Panama it melts fast, and ten minutes in it's a different thing.