Frit Arte: A Creative Café with Thai Food

After a four month hiatus, Frit Arte reopened this weekend, bringing back all of its creativity and Panama City’s only full Thai food menu.

Maria Consuelo Orozco, originally from Baranquilla on Colombia’s Northern Atlantic Coast, opened Frit Arte in 2009 as an art café, “where people can feel at home,” she says.

Frit Arte is many things:  a café, a stage for weekly belly dancing and salsa lessons, a community hangout, an exhibit space for Maria’s fused-recycled glassworks and works by other artists, and a Thai restaurant.

“Thai food, with ingredients like coconut, mandarin and mango,  is well adapted to a tropical country like Panama,” Maria explained.  And, Thai food is hard to find in Panama City.

On the menu are Thai curries, rices, salads and soups, and staples like Pad Thai and fish steamed in coconut milk and lemongrass, wrapped in banana leaves.  There are weekly $5 lunch specials that rotate from week to week.

On a side street off Casco Viejo’s Plaza Catedral, Frit Arte is open Monday through Saturday from noon to 10 p.m.

Maria and her Frit Arte Café / Photo PD