There are certain things you never expect to miss when you move to another country.
You expect to miss certain foods. Maybe your favorite cheese. Maybe a particular brand of bread. Maybe the ridiculous selection of snacks you used to find at every supermarket.
But orange juice?
Surely orange juice can't be difficult.
It's oranges. You squeeze them. You drink the juice.
Simple.
And then you live in Panama for a while.
Suddenly, finding a genuinely great glass of orange juice can become an unexpectedly serious mission.
Not because Panama doesn't have oranges. Quite the opposite. Panama is a tropical country with plenty of citrus production, and the country even has an established juice industry. One Panamanian citrus producer, Cítricos S.A., has been producing oranges and citrus products for decades.
The problem isn't the orange.
The problem is finding orange juice that actually tastes like an orange.
The supermarket orange juice lottery
Walk into a supermarket in Panama looking for orange juice and you'll quickly discover that there are a lot of different things wearing the orange-juice costume.
Some are made from concentrate.
Some contain a percentage of actual juice.
Some are sweetened.
Some are UHT.
Some are refrigerated.
Some are imported.
Some have pulp.
Some proudly announce that they have no pulp.
And then there are the mysterious ones where you pick up the carton, stare at the ingredients for thirty seconds and wonder:
"Wait... is this actually orange juice?"
For example, some products sold in Panama are explicitly made from concentrate. RICA's UHT orange drink, for example, lists water, orange juice from concentrate, sugar, citric acid, vitamin C, flavoring and other ingredients, with 30% juice.
That's not necessarily bad.
It's just not what you're looking for when you've spent your entire life imagining that "orange juice" means somebody squeezed a bunch of oranges into a container.
And that's where the struggle begins.
The holy grail: juice that tastes freshly squeezed
Anyone who has had genuinely fresh orange juice knows there is a massive difference.
Fresh juice has this incredible combination of sweetness, acidity, bitterness and citrus aroma.
It smells like an orange.
It tastes alive.
There is a little bit of bitterness from the peel and pulp. There is acidity that makes your mouth water. There is sweetness, but not the strange overwhelming sweetness of some processed drinks.
And most importantly...
It doesn't taste like orange-flavored liquid.
It tastes like an orange.
That distinction becomes painfully obvious once you've lived in Panama for a while.
You can drink a glass of mediocre orange juice and think, "Yeah, that's orange juice."
Then one morning somebody hands you a glass that was squeezed five minutes ago.
And suddenly you're thinking:
"Oh. THAT'S what orange juice is supposed to taste like."
The restaurant breakfast problem
This becomes particularly interesting when you're traveling around Panama.
You wake up in a hotel.
You walk downstairs.
There's breakfast.
Eggs.
Fruit.
Coffee.
Toast.
And...
orange juice.
You pour yourself a glass with optimism.
You take the first sip.
And immediately your brain starts asking questions.
"Is this orange juice?"
"Is this nectar?"
"Did they add sugar?"
"Was this made from concentrate?"
"Why does it taste like orange candy?"
Sometimes it's perfectly drinkable.
Sometimes it's actually good.
And occasionally you find the jackpot.
A little restaurant or roadside breakfast place where somebody has a pile of oranges behind the counter and an old-fashioned juicer.
That is when you stop being a tourist.
You become an orange-juice hunter.
And Panama actually has the perfect conditions for the good stuff
This is what makes the whole situation slightly maddening.
Panama has the raw ingredients.
There are oranges.
There is tropical agriculture.
There are local producers.
And there are places where you can find genuinely fresh juice.
Panama even has a history of commercial orange production and processing, including juice, pulp and concentrates.
So the problem isn't that Panama can't produce excellent orange juice.
It's that the juice you encounter in everyday life isn't necessarily the same thing as freshly squeezed juice.
And that's true in many countries.
Commercial juice has to survive transportation, refrigeration, storage and supermarket shelves. Fresh juice has one major advantage:
It doesn't have to survive very long.
It just has to survive breakfast.
The secret weapon: look for "exprimido"
If you're traveling through Panama and you're serious about orange juice, one word is worth remembering:
EXPRIMIDO.
If you see:
Jugo de naranja exprimido
your chances of getting something closer to fresh juice generally improve.
Even better is seeing somebody actually squeezing the oranges in front of you.
Because there is no marketing department involved at that point.
You can literally see the oranges.
You can hear the machine.
You can watch the juice come out.
And then you drink it.
That's hard to fake.
Don't automatically assume "100% juice" means freshly squeezed
This is another trap.
A bottle can contain 100% orange juice and still taste very different from juice that was squeezed that morning.
For example, Tropicana's Pure Premium Homestyle sold in Panama is listed as containing 100% orange juice, with pulp pieces.
That's legitimate orange juice.
But "100% orange juice" and "freshly squeezed five minutes ago" are two completely different experiences.
It's like comparing a fresh coconut you just opened with packaged coconut water.
Both can be real.
They just aren't the same experience.
The pulp debate
Then comes the great orange-juice argument:
Pulp or no pulp?
This can divide people more aggressively than politics.
Some people want absolutely zero pulp.
They want that perfectly smooth, almost translucent orange liquid.
Others want enough pulp that every sip reminds them that oranges once had physical structures.
And then there is the extreme pulp crowd.
You know who you are.
They don't want orange juice.
They want orange juice with orange chunks floating around in it.
Personally, there is something satisfying about a little pulp.
It makes the juice feel less processed.
And there are products available in Panama specifically marketed with real pulp. Florida's Natural, for example, is sold locally as pasteurized orange juice with pulp and without added colors, artificial flavors or preservatives.
But again...
Nothing beats the stuff that was squeezed in front of you.
The price can be ridiculous
And here's another part of the Panama orange juice adventure.
Sometimes the good stuff isn't cheap.
You can find inexpensive orange drinks everywhere.
But once you start looking for premium imported juice or something genuinely fresh, the price can jump dramatically.
For example, one Panama retailer currently lists a one-liter bottle of Florida's Natural at $4.99.
Meanwhile, Super Barú lists several orange-juice options, including Estrella Azul, Juver, Tropicana and a product described as "puro y fresco."
So you end up standing in the supermarket aisle holding two bottles.
One costs $2.
The other costs $5.
And you're thinking:
"How badly do I actually need good orange juice?"
Then you buy the expensive one.
Because you've been searching for three weeks.
But there is one solution that beats everything
Buy oranges.
Seriously.
If your goal is the best orange juice possible, stop searching for the perfect carton.
Find good oranges and squeeze them yourself.
It doesn't need to be complicated.
You don't need an expensive machine.
You don't need a fancy kitchen.
You need oranges.
A cheap hand juicer.
A glass.
Maybe some ice.
That's it.
And suddenly the great Panama orange juice struggle disappears.
Because now you control everything.
You control how fresh it is.
You control the pulp.
You control whether it's cold.
You control whether you add anything.
And you get to drink it immediately.
The Panama orange juice test
There is actually a fun way to test whether you've found good orange juice.
Don't drink it ice cold the first time.
Pour a little into a glass.
Let it sit for thirty seconds.
Smell it.
A good orange juice should smell unmistakably like orange.
Take a small sip.
You should get sweetness first, followed by acidity and citrus character.
If all you get is sweetness, something is missing.
If it tastes like orange candy, something is definitely missing.
If it tastes watery, something is very wrong.
But if you take a sip and immediately think:
"Holy crap, that's an orange."
You've found it.
Protect that source.
Remember the location.
Tell absolutely nobody.
Or tell all your friends.
Depending on how generous you're feeling.
The real Panama orange juice adventure
Perhaps that's actually one of the fun things about living or traveling in Panama.
You start realizing that some of the best food experiences aren't necessarily sitting on supermarket shelves.
They're hiding in little places.
A roadside stand.
A local market.
A tiny breakfast restaurant.
A farmer's stall.
A fruit vendor with a mountain of oranges.
Somewhere in the countryside, someone is probably squeezing oranges into a plastic cup right now, handing it to somebody for a couple of dollars, and producing a better glass of orange juice than anything sitting inside a beautifully designed carton.
And that's the secret.
If you want exceptional orange juice in Panama, don't necessarily look for the prettiest bottle.
Look for the oranges.
Look for the machine.
Look for the person squeezing them.
And when you finally find that perfect glass of fresh Panamanian orange juice on a hot morning...
drink it immediately.
Because five minutes later, you'll probably start wondering where you can get another one. 🍊🇵🇦