Sabor Tico is what a soda — a small, family-run Costa Rican lunch joint — should be. The menu is short and unpretentious: casados, gallo pinto for breakfast, olla de carne stew, tortillas hot off the press. Prices are roughly half of what you pay at the tourist-facing places along the main strip.
The original is in a wooden building off the main square; a second branch sits just below the cheese factory road. Eat early — by 7 pm they are often out of the day's specials. A useful corrective when Santa Elena's restaurant prices start to feel less than tropical.