Cafeteria Rincón Manuelitas was another little place we discovered on Charles Binford. It is tiny and a rare one in that it does open for breakfast. In fact, it isn’t open too late in the evening as is the norm on this night oriented eating street. We noticed the owner baking what looked like cakes to us on a number of occasions as we passed by. He always seemed to be out of them and from his obvious loving care of the little morsels we assumed they must be good. Though very small, he seemed to have a strong following. We did manage to get a seat one morning to finally get a taste of his food.
Another reason for our wanting to eat there was his coffee. We had commented to a fellow traveler about the lack of decent coffee in Ecuador and she explained that if you saw a jar on your table with a dark liquid in it that you could bet it was strong coffee. Locals diluted this liquid with either hot milk or water. Once armed with this information we did in fact notice the peculiar ritual. So, we not only ordered up a couple of his cakes which turned out to be called tortillas de queso but also cafe con leche and made it obvious that we did not want instant coffee by pointing at the bottle!