A Food Trip Report

I just got back from my second trip to Playa, and hands down this site was the most useful and insightful restaurant guide for Playa I have ever seen. As much as I've wandered around and tried things on my two trips, I know I would not have found several of the best things I had without the terrific posts here.

I am actually a moderator for a Chicago-based food board, LTHForum.com, and one of the things that this experience has convinced me is that if you want the real info, you have to check a local-based board-- only locals have the time to go past the places that are found in Fodor's (or even the Sterns' guides) and try place after place, week after week and month after month, looking for undiscovered gems. We have a pretty strong record of doing that in Chicago and the same seems true for you guys here.

I am in the process of posting a lengthy report on my Playa trip here:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2690

I snap a lot of pictures as I eat so even if the info there won't hold a lot of surprises for folks here, I think you'll enjoy the photos (and they may help you actually spot some of the more obscure locations in the future). I've posted three chapters so far but there will be at least two more (one on Juarez Ave. and one on comidas; I suppose there will probably be a roundup one after that to pick up the strays).

Once again, thank you for the great tips and I hope you enjoy my reports.

P.S. In response to popular demand and with thankfully few technical glitches I have been able to post my reports here, complete with pics. So look below. However, if you ever need Chicago food recos, please visit us at LTHForum.com, and I think anyone who loves Playa would enjoy reading about the authentic Mexican food there, including at the Maxwell Street Market mentioned below. Once again, thanks to all for the tips, kind comments and help.

[Sunny]

Mike, this is really great. I think you should have started your own topic!

[denisea]

I agree. Mike, you should submit your trip report here on Playa.Info in this section of the forum too... only as it's own thread. It would be a very welcome addition. I really enjoyed it... both the report and the pix. Great job! Thanks for sharing it with us.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it (and remember, more to come). I don't seem to have privileges to start a thread, maybe once it's complete at LTHForum.com, then someone could start one for me and I'll post it here, I assume I can link to my images the same way.

[vacationstar]

Wonderful report Mike. I can't wait to read more.

[denisea]

Originally Posted by Mike G

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it (and remember, more to come). I don't seem to have privileges to start a thread, maybe once it's complete at LTHForum.com, then someone could start one for me and I'll post it here, I assume I can link to my images the same way.

De nada... looking forward to the next installment. Well, I have privileges to start a thread... so when you're ready let me know by sending me a pm and I'll get a thread started for you. Yes, you should be able to link to your images the same way... if not I can help you out there as well.

[cmsitaly]

Awesome report! I really enjoyed reading it, and I loved the pics to go along with it.

Thanks!

[Michael]

Yes that is a superb report. Should this thread be cut in half and become two?

[denisea]

Originally Posted by michaelholmes

Yes that is a superb report. Should this thread be cut in half and become two?

Excellent idea Michael! Done!

I. Preamble Before Breakfast

The dusty, sunbaked, violence-riddled streets of Mexico, a place so dangerous and where life is so cheap that even the ice cream is under armed guard:



Okay, he was actually there to watch the jewelry store next door. Let me correct that impression right away and say that Playa del Carmen is astonishingly crime free, friendly and welcoming. Far from being something out of a Peckinpah movie, this is the atmosphere you're more likely to find walking the streets of this town an hour south of Cancun on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan peninsula:



Many people would say that the existence of a T.G.I. Friday's on its main street (hey, isn't being thankful for Friday kind of redundant when you're already on vacation in the tropics?) proves that Playa del Carmen is a tourist creation, not the "real Mexico," whatever that may be. Leaving aside that ontological question (quick, is Las Vegas the real America or not?), Playa del Carmen is clearly, if not a typical Mexican town, a fascinating place where hypermodern international and traditional Mexican culture collide with a noisy clang. Or to cut short the next thousand words with a single picture:


Man in yarmulkeh and sarape, sitting in trendy technobar in Mexican village, 2005.

My family and I first went to Playa two years ago. I had selected it pretty randomly-- the shortest possible flight to warm water and beaches in winter was Cancun; but (this was actually right at the moment that MTV's The Real Cancun was about to be released) I guessed that we would quickly loathe being herded into a concrete encampment of hotels and discos and Planet Hollywoods, surrounded by drunken students of all ages, and about two minutes' search of guidebooks turned up Playa as a more relaxed and real-ish choice within a bus-able distance. Fine, done, book it.



What I found was a beach town that in many ways was like what I loved about Maxwell Street-- allegedly the fastest-growing city in Mexico at the moment, Playa is a boom town, sprouting vitality and economic activity from every crack in the sidewalk. If you don't like your restaurant or your hotel, just wait 15 minutes and they'll open a new one. Yet for all that it's growing rapidly, there's clearly strict zoning going on (only one older building has been grandfathered in at a height above three stories) and there's an agreeably international and post-hippie-turning-electronica-chichi vibe that keeps it from displaying too much of the depressing desperation you get in places like Cozumel that seem to exist only to satiate the shopping monkey on the cruise passenger's back.



More to the point, unlike say Cancun, which is really two places as separate as East and West Berlin, a tourist town on a little island strip and a Mexican town on the mainland that exists to service and staff it, Playa is still small and compact enough that the real Mexico exists right there amidst Touristia. You could stick to the beach and Avenida Quinta, 5th Ave., the shopping, eating and drinking street, but literally a block to the west Mexico starts, the prices drop drastically and no one would ever call out the "Fun" in Fundido on a sign. Even more interestingly, keep going north on Avenida Quinta, and you will leave America not for Mexico but for Italy. The district north of Constituyentes avenue, which just two years ago was pretty much the northern border of town, is now a flourishing Italian (or more likely, Argentinean-Italian) district (and note this, Antonius-- amid the espresso bars and restaurants there's also a single Belgian bar. I know it is the only one, because its name is... "The Belgian Bar.")

Two years ago I was very proud that in addition to a lot of meals eaten in restaurants along Avenida Quinta, I had made some ventures out into the surrounding streets and tried that kind of "real" Mexican food. Looking back at what I wrote then, I see only how timid I was then compared to now, not in terms of what I'd try but in terms of how daring and diligent I'd be in searching for the really good stuff beyond the precincts of gringo-friendly sitdown restaurants. Of course, even at that I went beyond most guidebooks or online resources in being willing to wander and sample. 90% of the information that exists on a place like Playa is at a Fodor's level of mass acceptability and comfort-range-maintenance.



This time I was determined to go much, much further-- though I knew I'd eat some nice dinners (and especially with the Italo-Argentinean restaurants around, I looked forward to some good food of that sort), my real goal was to try as many things in the Mexican parts of town as possible. And this time, I found a Playa-oriented site, one might call it our Mexican Sister City site, that (adjusting for size) was as thorough in exploring the nooks and crannies of the real food in Playa as we are about Chicago's. The site is called www.Playa.info, but this takes you directly to the food forum, and even more to the point, a thread called "Updating the PDC restaurant list" consolidates the key information in incredibly convenient form. This wasn't just better information than I'd found anywhere else, it was orders of magnitude better than anything that exists elsewhere, representing the real experiences of people who live there long enough to try place after place, get to know the owners, do all those things we do here to get past the usual customer-restaurateur barrier. It's really an encouraging thought, this idea that quite probably there are cities and regions all over the globe spawning their little boards (or not so little boards) which, like us in Chicago, dig into their local food scenes infinitely more tenaciously and thoroughly than any printed source, any famous name guidebooks, any resource that has existed before. (Who knows, at this rate we may even find one for Orlando.)

Thus armed with both information and determination, as well as the sympathy of my family who only uttered the words "Doesn't pizza sound good?" or "Can we eat at McDonald's?" after a few days of eating where and what Dad picked, I set forth to find the real Mexico in Playa del Carmen. If you haven't already guessed, there are many more chapters and many more photos of things you'll wish you could go eat to come in the next few days.

II. Desayuno

I knew the first thing I would want to do once we had settled in at our rented condo-- start walking back to the highway, to go to the market. If the picture that phrase conjures up is a dingy but wonderfully picturesque shop with a wizened, toothless proprietress in peasant dress behind the cash register, well, Playa has lots of those, but I was heading for Chedraui, a Costco-sized store with art museum-level contemporary architecture (that's one of the things you notice in Mexico-- it's still Modern down there where we've gone Mock Renaissance-Tuscan), the sort of market the French call a Hypermarché.

It's fun to just stroll the departments and see the things that are customary grocery products for them-- the enormous crimson mound of dried hibiscus for making jamaica, the fish counter piled with slabs of white squid flesh and whole purple-edged octopi (alas, an area too well staffed to allow surreptitious snatching of pictures), the bar with Baskin-*******-like tubs of spices and molés--





I'd actually come down here with the idea that I might cook once or twice, using the local ingredients and my Diana Kennedy cookbook. Reality set in when I realized my kitchenette was just barely equipped at a level high enough for scrambled eggs and frankly I didn't really know what to do with a big slab of octopus and some molé anyway-- and, for crying out loud, there were only 5000 restaurants I wanted to try in the next week. So I gave up on that idea pretty quickly. But, there was one meal I knew I would want to be able to make rather than get everyone dressed and out the door to hunt up every day-- breakfast. So I grabbed a metal tray and some tongs and made my first stab at provisions:



The pastries lived up to Vital Info's dictum about Mexican pastries in America-- what they lack in French delicacy and perfection they make up in utter cheapness. I usually don't consider that enough of a recommendation to make me want to hit, say, Pierre's, but here, averaging about 20 cents each, they were welcome. The two boxes on display are both Kellogg's products not marketed here, which we liked well enough last time to bring home a couple of boxes of; Crusli is a granola-like cereal with coconut in it, and the yellow box contains pineapple-flavored Nutri-Grain bars.

As I say, however, this was only part of our breakfast routine, and we would try many other things over the course of the week. For one thing, we actually discovered quite a decent French bakery, a tiny storefront opposite the south end of the main plaza in the Mexican part of town, where we bought these:



Croissant Digression: I keep searching on this side of the Atlantic for raisin croissants filled with custard like you can find every ten feet in Paris, they're the most ordinary thing there, like a sesame bagel is here, and yet no one I know of quite gets it right in this hemisphere (including the St. Roger Abbey-- believe me, it was the first thing I checked!) This got closer than most, but it still didn't have the custard center. That aside, all this was quite tasty, pretty authentically made, and more evidence for the idea that Playa is a vacation to more than just Mexico. Among their other offerings, I didn't actually buy one of these fruit tarts, but I did like how they looked well enough to snap a picture:



There were also chilaquiles on the beach at the beachfront restaurant of the El Alhambra hotel (a Playainfo recommendation), and Huevos Mexicanos--



at a little place called Cafeteria Maru on Avenida Juarez, where the kids shared a pineapple juice and watched the world go by:



But Mexicans eat way more things for breakfast than just cereals, pastries and plates of eggs. In fact breakfast time finds the square near the pier filled with stands like the orange juice one I showed the picture of above, offering all kinds of tacos, tortas, tamales and such things. Those stands will be a topic in themselves, so hold that thought while we segue to another Mexican breakfast choice, tamales. One morning I went on a quest for a recommended regional specialty called Brazo de Reyna, The Arm of the Queen. I found it on the menu at a spot called Antojitos Adrian, around Avenida 20 and Calle 4:



(By the way, the symbol for peso is also "$", so those aren't $9 tamales-- they work out to the equivalent of about 80 cents.)

It's a masa tamale in a banana leaf wrapper with bits of chaya leaf in the dough, and in its center, an egg-- a VERY hard egg by the time I got it. It came with two little bags, of a hot sauce and some strange, brownish spice that I couldn't place-- maybe some kind of ground nut or even something like ground breadcrumbs, I don't know, it had a very odd texture and not all that much flavor, I couldn't place it. To be honest, this didn't do a lot for me but who knows, maybe there's a better rendition of it out there, or some other tamale at the same place that is really wonderful.



So that's my chronicle of the first meal of the day. But before this chapter concludes, let me show you something I spotted on the way to Chedraui that first day-- in the lot next to an automotive or air conditioning or something repair place, there was a tent, and under that tent there was this:



An industrial sized grill, full of the previous night's ash. Make a note of that, I says to myself; something tells me these people will be back, with something to cook. And so will I.

III. Playa del Carts

Those of you who've been reading these saying "When the hell is he actually going to post about FOOD, not breakfast cereal but real food, MEAT dammit, meat," will find satisfaction at last in today's installment.



If you never ventured off the tourist strip of Avenida 5 and the adjacent beach, and only ate at chain restaurants, you would nevertheless pass within mere feet of incredibly authentic, delicious and cheap Mexican food every day in Playa del Carmen-- at the stands or pushcarts which appear, in different configurations, throughout the day at the very epicenter of tourist activity.

These pictures, like the orange juice one in my initial post, are all taken at the point where Avenida 5 (Tourist Central) intersects with Avenida Juarez (Mexican Native Central). To the immediate south are souvenir stands, the ferry to Cozumel, Señor Frogs (the first and often only stop for margarita-seeking Cozumelites) and a mall with a Diesel and a Johnny Rockets; to the east is the beach; to the north, quite literally the first building you will hit is a McDonald's; and the soundtrack throughout is guys hawking tickets to Cozumel and using any imaginable gambit to start the conversation ("Hello honeymooners!" they will shout at two elderly grumps; or to a parent, "How much for your baby?")

In other words, it is a Tourist Hell that anyone with any sense will want to pass through as quickly as possible-- except for one thing. The carts.





Even the most skittish don't-eat-or-drink-anything-Mexican tourists will find it impossible on a morning already rapidly growing warm to resist orange juice squeezed before their very eyes from fruit whose skin has been removed with a machete. Surely that's safe, Marge-- and of course it is.

But we know better than to stop there, don't we? When we see a whole hunk of roasted pork bathing contentedly in its own grease, we know this is something we were born to eat:



The pink stuff is onion that's been soaked in red wine vinegar-- and if that's not vinegary enough for you, try this bright fuschia salsa:



This was the best thing I ate on my last trip. It was almost the best thing I ate on this trip. And it cost about 40 cents. Did I mention that it was eight in the morning when they serve these things? These particular carts are out first thing in the morning, and the locals wolf down these pork tacos (or the same meat put on a roll) by the dozens. Then, by lunchtime, just when you or I would think of having another half dozen, they're gone. So if you want one, you have to adjust your head to the idea that you want them at a time when your body is saying you want bran cereal or a grapefruit half.

The pork taco is clearly the most popular item at this hour of the day, and last time I said that I found it frustrating that all the stands seemed to sell identical offerings at that time. They must have read my post on that other board because there is, finally, a little more variety at this hour-- chicken tacos, and also at least one cart offering a variety of fish tacos, most of them ceviche-based:





That was a ceviche marlin taco. Very strongly fishy. Really pushing my idea of how much I can stomach at breakfast. But nevertheless, it was something different, so I respected that.

By lunchtime the carts are gone. In fact there are few carts at all in mid-day, for reasons unknown to me-- just a few elotes or ice cream vendors. Then in mid-afternoon, appear the fruit vendors-- dozens of carts, all staffed by women this time, selling plastic cups full of spears of melon, canteloupe, pineapple, papaya, again skinned with a machete before slicing to reassure the nervous tourist:



A little later, closer to dinner time, a churro cart, also selling plantain chips (which I liked better than the unfilled but admirably fresh churros), turns up. But that's really it for the square at that hour, as the gringos head off for serious drinking and the action shifts further up Juarez-- tacos, empanadas, elotes, even hot dogs (which I turned up my nose at, though I must admit, they smelled more than respectable, especially with onions grilling alongside).



But by that hour there's better action to be had on Juarez, so we'll save that for my next installment. I'll just end with two notes:

•*Try to imagine how proud I was when we'd enter the square each morning and my son, standing in the very shadow of his beloved golden arches, would say, "I want a taco." (Okay, he doesn't really like breakfast at McDonald's. But still. That's my boy.)

•*After turning up my nose at the hot dogs, on the flight home I was listening to a Splendid Table episode on my iPod. David Rosengarten was the guest, talking about great hot dogs he'd had in Iceland-- and said at one point, "But they have great hot dogs in many countries-- Japan, Spain, Mexico...."

IV. The Perpendicular Universe of Avenida Juarez

In Siena, Italy, every night around 9 o'clock, the citizens leave their homes en masse and wander up and down the main street, the Via di Città, saying hi to neighbors and sipping coffee and shooting the breeze. This doesn't sound extraordinary, but it's a remarkable sensation when an entire town pours out into car-less streets at night, turning the darkened city into a social center. It's a strangely unnerving feeling-- you are, after all, surrounded by strangers in the dark-- and yet at the same time welcoming, like the whole city has become a backyard party.

It's a feeling you don't get much in America, because even when you're on a street at night with lots of strangers it's one (like Michigan Ave.) where cars set the atmosphere; it's their street, we're just walking along it. But it's what it's like to walk up and down Avenida Quinta, day or night, cars almost completely banned (though trucks abuse the privilege here and there) and, most noticeably, the sounds all human-based, not car-based. And that constant human vitality, day and night, is why that main tourist strip keeps drawing you back, even if your first glance (which is almost certain to be near the ferry dock, the McDonald's and all the street hawkers) makes it look more like one of those invented plastic environments, like Citywalk in L.A., than a real street.

However, there's one thing you notice is missing from Avenida Quinta after a while-- Mexicans. They're there selling things, but they're not strolling around looking for a chance to pay tourist prices, that's for sure. In fact, the locals have their own main drag, one might call it a parallel main street except for the fact that it is actually perpendicular to Avenida Quinta. Especially at night, it comes alive with the local population, strolling and shopping and eating and talking, the same way Quinta comes alive with the visitors. It's Avenida Juarez, marking the south end of downtown, and though most tourists will travel it in a car or bus to get from the highway to the beach at some point, it is not an exaggeration to say that one night as I walked it, a few blocks in I saw more drag queens than gringos out and about.



That's a disco along Juarez, still displaying in late January the traditional Mexican idea of "Navidad." All along Juarez there are clothing shops (both conventional and, notably, service uniforms), little groceries, repair shops, a squat, cinder block Policia station, and, it will come as no surprise, places to eat. Lots of places to eat.



During the day carnitas and barbacoa are a big draw-- order some tacos from the counter, then sit down at the plastic patio furniture inevitably bearing Coke or Pepsi logos and eat.



These were pretty good, unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the signage so who knows which stand it was. After I took his picture he picked up a chunk of something and offered it to me to try. "Buche," he said. I knew I was being tested with something he thought would gross me out, so I ate it unhesitatingly. Salty, roasted, actually better than my pork taco. Later I looked 'buche" up. It was maw. Best I ever had!



Here's another pork taco I had, actually liked this better, green salsa was scaldingly hot. This place has a painted sign on the front of the glass that says "Estilo de Michoacan," and it would be well worth seeking out. Here's a rare photo of rather than by me while eating:



I really liked that they chopped the meat on this hunk of tree. Now that's atmosphere.



Roasted chicken is a big thing here too, and a more convenient takeout food than many. I didn't actually eat at this one, just liked its decorations.



Instead we tried a place just off Juarez and just east of the Chedraui, in a strip mall and advertising Sinaloa style chicken with a secret recipe. I took that as a recommendation, not realizing that half the Pollo Asado places in town claim Sinaloa style. If the secret recipe had anything other than salt, I didn't taste it, but it wasn't bad. (The bottled horchata, however, was bad. Learned to only go places where they made it themselves.)



The best Pollo Asado I've had there was still at a place called Pollo Rojo, maybe around Calle 4 and Avenida 20 or so, two years ago. Anyway, remember the industrial sized grill full of cold ashes I saw, just east of the highway in the lot of a repair place? I finally got back to it one evening (they're only open at night) and picked up a bunch of taco de res and pork tacos hot off the grill to take home. Here's the grillman at work:



For toppings they set out literally a dozen or more tubs, I would have liked to have had RST there to tell me what they all were, or maybe just another couple of dozen tacos to try some of each. I especially liked a creamy guacamole and this stuff at the front, which was sort of like Guatemalan or Salvadoran cortida, but with more green and less vinegar mixed in. I never saw it anywhere else, so I'm not sure if it's from another region or what.



Another big thing you can only get at night along Juarez is tacos al pastor. Indeed any place that makes them has the meat roasting right out front, to attract the evening stroller. This place, El Sarape, looks like it might be a chain, but if so it seems to be a chain built on outstanding tacos al pastor, because it really was-- good smoke flavor, nice hint of pineapple sweetness (some cones of meat have a pineapple half that sits on top as it roasts):







I tried another one that same night-- this was, by the way, after already eating dinner with the family-- returning to my spot by the highway for the pastor I'd seen just beginning to roast with real coals when I'd gotten the tacos. If El Sarape's was sweet and gringo-friendly, this was primitive pastor, as red as Tandoori and as chili-hot as Arthur Bryant's sauce. Here, much more than the tacos from the other night, was something that needed a topping from those tubs to balance it out, cool it down. Which was better? I wouldn't have missed either one.

[Donna]

Great report. I am so hungry now!

[SarahB]

What a GREAT thread, Mike! Thanks for sharing it! Look forward to more...although I am hungry now and nothing around me is going to cut it! Thanks for that too!