Ah food! Everyone’s favorite subject, or at least in my family. There are sooo many restaurants in Playa del Carmen that you could live here for a very long time and barely try a fraction of them.
The restaurant scene here is also always changing and only some of the places stay long term, which is both good and bad, we’ve lost some of our favorite places but also gained some new favorites.
Also there’s a really interesting mix since the area is so heavily focused on tourism that there’s a lot of different kinds of food available, not just Mexican, some is bad and some is really good. Here’s a short(ish) list of some of our favorites.
Let’s talk Mexican first… Living here has introduced us to some kinds of food we hadn’t tired before and I think I haven’t yet come across something I don’t like. One thing that is very particular to the Yucatan is cochinita pibil which is essentially pulled pork with achiote pepper and bitter orange and other spices. Super delicious! There are more types of Yucatecan food we like but that’s definitely our favorite.
We also have a lot of ceviche and fresh seafood here since we’re on the coast, which is really fresh and delicious. Pretty much the entire coast has some sort of ceviche or another it just varies a bit depending on what is available.
There’s tons of other kinds of Mexican foods that we’ve been able to try like tacos, enchiladas, empanadas, chilaquiles, sopes, huraches, sopes, mole, pozole… These foods are delicious and sometimes we can find a place that does some of these pretty well however you’ll find the best version of these in Central Mexico. We went a couple of times for our regional convention and an anniversary trip and the food was so good I still think about it.
So besides some favorite Mexican foods we have some favorite local restaurants where pretty much everything is good.
- La Cueva del Chango – Chilaquiles
- Ah Cacao – Coffee, Mayan chocolate
- Cart on Diagonal 80 – Cochinita pibil tacos & tortas
- Oasis – Seafood & Ceviche
- El Fogon – Tacos!!! Pastor, Sirloin, Chorizo
- Hijas de la Tostada – Seafood Tostadas
- La Jarochita – Mexican food from Veracruz
- Inti – Beach club/Seafood restaurant
- La Senda – Vegan mexican fusion
- Marquesitas – anywhere you can find!
I also had a few non-Mexican options I thought were worth mentioning.
- Chez Celine – French bakery, amazing croissants
- La Famiglia – Italian, best pasta in town
- Trattoria del Centro – Italian, best pizza ever!!!
So these are just some of our current favorites, hopefully these all stick around for a while. Playa del Carmen definitely has some great food and on average it’s quite a bit cheaper than what we used to pay to go out to eat in the states so we’ve been taking advantage of that while we’ve been here… a lot!