English Why El Santuario Is Becoming One of Panama’s Most Noticed Restaurants
Travel writer Jamie Davis Smith placed El Santuario among five hotel restaurants worth planning a stay around, drawing attention to its setting, its cuisine, and a distinctly Panamanian cup of coffee.
A recent Travel Bulletin feature placed El Santuario at Hotel La Compañía Casco Antiguo among five hotel restaurants around the world worth booking a stay for. The recognition came down to a rare combination of setting, food, and a clear connection to Panama
There is an immediate reason El Santuario stays with people. The restaurant occupies the Spanish Wing of Hotel La Compañía, inside the former Jesuit complex that dates to 1688. Its stone walls, high arches, and stained glass survived a long history of abandonment and restoration, giving the dining room a presence that cannot be recreated by design alone.
That setting recently caught the attention of travel writer Jamie Davis Smith, who included El Santuario in a Travel Bulletin selection of five hotel restaurants around the world worth booking a stay for. After visiting hotels across 90 countries, she described Hotel La Compañía as the most interesting she had encountered and singled out its restaurants as an important part of that impression.
Her meal at El Santuario brought the architecture and the kitchen together. Chef Jonathan Campos works from a Spanish-influenced menu that moves between Panama’s culinary past and its present, using local ingredients along the way. Smith highlighted the traditional paella she ordered for dinner while also noting Panamanian dishes such as ropa vieja on the menu.
“El Santuario leaves an impression because the history of the room and the food on the table belong to the same place.”
The detail she remembered at the end of the meal was particularly Panamanian: a cup of Geisha coffee. Grown in Panama and known internationally as one of the world’s most valuable coffee varieties, it arrived here without ceremony, served as the natural closing note to dinner. It is a small detail, but it says a great deal about the restaurant’s relationship with the country around it.
What makes the Travel Bulletin recognition useful is its perspective. El Santuario was considered alongside restaurants in Lisbon, Bordeaux, Washington, D.C., and Maui, including dining rooms associated with chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and José Andrés. Its place on that list came from a different proposition: a meal set within seventeenth-century architecture, supported by a kitchen that keeps Panama visible on the plate.
For Hotel La Compañía, that kind of attention reaches beyond a restaurant review. El Santuario is one of the spaces where the history of the building becomes part of an ordinary evening: people sit beneath old arches, order dinner, drink Panamanian coffee, and give a former convent another life. That may be the strongest reason the restaurant continues to travel beyond Casco Antiguo by word of mouth.