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Vallodalid, Campeche, and Merida


kalypso

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Kalypso,

when will you be leaving for Mexico? I don't have time right now but I have plenty of recommendations for Merida....my fave mexican city.

I will post my list as soon as i can...prob in aday or so.

"We do not stop playing because we grow old,

we grow old because we stop playing"

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Please do post your recommendations. I'll be leaving on the 21st.

I've traveled a lot in Mexico but this will be my first trip to the Yucatan. I've culled better suggestions for Valladolid and Campeche than I have for Merdia. Most of what I have for Merida so far is where not to eat. Go figure.

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  • 1 year later...

The best place we found when I was there was Local 3 out on Prolongacion Paseo de Montejo. They're doing contemporary Mexican and for the most part, doing a pretty good job at it. They don't have a web site as far as I could tell, but here's the link to their Trip Advisor reviews http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g150811-d2058369-Reviews-Local_3-Merida_Municipality_of_Merida_Yucatan_Peninsula.html

The cocktails were very good as were some of their soups and the fish dishes. I had the shrimp crusted with chicharrones, which was pertty tasty and not has heavy as it sounds. The least successful dish was a pork loin encacahuatado. The sauce was fine, the pork was fine, but it was a big hunk of meat and hard to eat, presenation could have been better on that one.

In general, the restaurant choices in Merida were fairly underwhelming. Some of our best dining was in Valladolid at Taberna de los Frailes - http://tabernadelosfrailes.com/ Consistently good food, interestingly prepared, relaxing palapa style setting. The grilled watermelon salad was outstanding, as was the house made passionfruit ice cream made from the passonfruits grown on the property

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Edited to add...

If you're into this kind of thing, there is a Slow Food chapter in Merida (SF Yucatan) that has a weekly market. It's small but has an interesting mix of locals and ex-pats selling things. It's more oriented towards artisan foods than farmers and has everything from 3 guys (2 locals and a German) doing lettuce starts on their rooftop in discarded 3-gallong plastic jugs, to an ex-pat selling prepared Korean food, to the young guy just returned home from the U.S. who makes coconut pies from the coconut palms in his back yard, to the Mexican woman with devine cheeses and a crazy assortment of herbs and greens. http://www.los-dos.com/cooking/verarticulo2.php?IdArticulo=244530 Link includes a map to the market location, definitely not on the beaten tourist path

The Slow Food Market is hosted by Monique DuVal, an American ex-pat from San Antonio married to a Dutch ex-pat at the bakery she owns and operates. I wouldn't exact categorize Monique as the typical American ex-pat, she's pretty much a force of nature. High energy, more alternative/counter culture minded and probably more integrated into the local community than to the mainstream ex-pat community. Breads, pastries, sweets, savories, lunch and brunch. http://www.facebook.com/#!/moniquebakery

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  • 6 months later...

Just got back. Mostly we ate at friends' houses (lucky me!) and on the beaches, which was almost always ceviche with local sea snails called chivitas, pan de cazon and pescado frito. it was hard to get tired of that! By chance we ate at Taberna de los Frailes that kalypso mentioned above. it's right next to a great old monestary and it's a nice setting but we either ordered wrong or it's gone down the tubes or we weren't a good fit. I had a green chaya soup that tasted like nothing and Poc chuc, which was described as being accompanied by black beans. It was was a lightly grilled marinated pork piece which wasn't bad but it was cooked on too low a fire and boring. The beans were served in a thimble (well, practically except a thimble might hold more) and it was all on silly oversized plates. No one liked what they had and swore off "fine dining" for the rest of the trip and stuck to ceviches and cochinita. The music was from the soundtrack to an adventure music and it was really weird, to say the least.

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Just got back. Mostly we ate at friends' houses (lucky me!) and on the beaches, which was almost always ceviche with local sea snails called chivitas, pan de cazon and pescado frito. it was hard to get tired of that! By chance we ate at Taberna de los Frailes that kalypso mentioned above. it's right next to a great old monestary and it's a nice setting but we either ordered wrong or it's gone down the tubes or we weren't a good fit. I had a green chaya soup that tasted like nothing and Poc chuc, which was described as being accompanied by black beans. It was was a lightly grilled marinated pork piece which wasn't bad but it was cooked on too low a fire and boring. The beans were served in a thimble (well, practically except a thimble might hold more) and it was all on silly oversized plates. No one liked what they had and swore off "fine dining" for the rest of the trip and stuck to ceviches and cochinita. The music was from the soundtrack to an adventure music and it was really weird, to say the least.

Sounds like they've gone down the tubes to me. What we ate was consistently good and not on weird oversized plates or in minimal portions, some of our portions were actually too big. Sounds like they let their initial success go to their heads and tried to take it to the next level and failed. Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience there.

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