Yaxche in Playa del Carmen

[tighe]

My wife and I recently returned from a week on the Mayan Riviera. We stayed at the Xpu-Ha Palace, about 20 minutes south of Playa del Carmen. It’s a great place, offering a lot of different activities, but doesn’t have the ‘mega-resort’ feel of the other Palace resorts. As an all-inclusive, our expectations for the food were modest, but we found that once you learned your way around the menus/buffet, it was possible to eat well.

Before leaving home, we had decided to eat out at least a couple times during the week and chose Yaxche in Playa for our first meal out and ended up going back for our second as well. It was simply fabulous, one of the best restaurants I’ve been to anywhere. There’s no doubt that it is geared towards tourists; the prices are too high for most local residents I would imagine, but most of the food is based on traditional Mayan recipes.

First dinner

Bread was served with a garlic cream sauce and green salsa. Both were excellent and even better together.

Boxito: shrimp tacos cooked with a chilmole sauce. Spicy but intensely flavorful; the sauce was almost black.

Tsic: a salsa made with lobster ceviche, corn, chiles and cilantro, layered between fried tortillas, maybe the best single dish we had.

Putun: a whole red snapper marinated in the traditional Tikin Xic way, with axiote paste and sour orange juice, then grilled wrapped in a banana leaf. One of the greatest fish dishes I’ve ever had. Perfectly cooked, extremely fresh with an amazing flavor.

Chac Mool: Shrimp that had been marinated in tangerine, chipotle and tomato sauce and then grilled. Very good, but not as flavorful as I would have expected.

With dinner we had a surprisingly good (to me at least) Mexican Chardonnay from the Calixa winery.

Second dinner (all appetizers)

Pibxatic: a large (and hot) chile pepper, stuffed with pork pibil and onion, then roasted. So spicy it hurt, but so good I couldn’t stop myself from eating it.

Xtoloc: crepes made with chaya leaf that were stuffed with cheese and roasted sweet chile peppers and then baked in a gratin dish. A fabulous dish if you love cheesy things, kind of an upscale enchilada.

Naha: tuna salad with chipotle peppers on a bed of chaya leaves. When I ordered this I was envisioning grilled tuna on top of a salad, but this was actual “tuna salad.” After getting over my disappointment, I really enjoyed it and will probably put chipotles in my tuna fish sandwiches from now on.

Pork pipil tacos: pork marinated with chiles and sour orange juice. Simple, beautiful, tasty.

Grouper ceviche: an ample portion of fish flavored with lime and chiles, mixed with onion, tomato and some other things I'm forgetting. My first experience with real ceviche, and I'm totally sold....

Tsic: again.

For dessert I had the ‘Café Maya’, which is a large mug of coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and xtabentun (a local liquor made with anise and honey, think sweet Sambuca). The best part is how the xtabentun gets into the coffee. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but two waiters, each holding two metal gravy boats, if you will, create a cascade of flaming xtabentun. Definitely the best restaurant tricks I’ve ever seen.

After dinner our waiter introduced us to a cocktail called a ‘Mayan Kiss’. A shot of the aforementioned xtabentun, on the rocks, with a shot of Kahlua. Way too tasty and easy to drink.

A somewhat surreal part of the experience was sitting in this great restaurant and being bathed in the glow of yellow neon from the TGI Friday’s across the narrow street. Somehow I think that if you're going to eat at a TGI Friday's, you shouldn't be allowed to leave the country, then again some people would probably say the same thing about staying at an all-inclusive resort.....

The other notable place we ate was during a tour to Isla Mujeres. While the others in our group were being herded through the shopping area, we snuck off and had lunch at a place on the beach at a place called Velasquez. Sitting under a palapa on the beach with a beer and some great grilled seafood is real hard to beat. Although we’d had one lunch already, we still ordered two items, grilled squid and grilled prawns in garlic sauce. Both were exceptional in their freshness and simplicity.

It was my first time in the Yucatan, not to mention Mexico. I’m anxious to go back and spend some time traveling around the area and experience more local places.

Edit: added a course that I forgot first time around

Edited April 17, 2003 by tighe (log)

[Marlene]

We also just returned from the Mayan Rivera where we stayed at the Royal Hideaway. All inclusive as well. It's a small resort, just 200 rooms, with service and food like I've never experienced at an all inclusive. A big part of staying at the RH is the dining experience. All of the restaurants are ala carte, the only buffet you will see is for breakfast and there's an ala carte choice for breakfast as well.

Each restaurant has a different theme, Mexican, Asian, International, American and Italian. In each restaurant you are presented with both a menu and a wine list. The wines that were included were surprizingly good, including a very nice Chilean Merlot. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but it was a 1998. This being the house wine.

Each restaurant starts you off with an amuse reflecting that restaurant's cusine, and provides a sherbert for palate cleansing in between courses.

Every dish we tried was pretty awesome.

We ate in Playa Del Carmen one night at Captain Bob's which, despite it's name, is a Mexican steakhouse. Here the waiters did everything tableside, from the ceasar salad, to the flambeing of the steak to the making of the strawberries jubilee to the mayan coffee. They also did the two metal gravyboat trick, except one waiter stands on a chair above the other waiter and pours.

It was an incredible holiday

[stellabella]

*sigh*

tighe, nice write-up--thanks for that. god, that water looks beautiful.

i'm so glad that we're getting more and more traffic re: mexico, one of my favs.

[tighe]

We also just returned from the Mayan Rivera where we stayed at the Royal Hideaway. All inclusive as well.  It's a small resort, just 200 rooms, with service and food like I've never experienced at an all inclusive. A big part of staying at the RH is the dining experience.  All of the restaurants are ala carte, the only buffet you will see is for breakfast and there's an ala carte choice for breakfast as well.

I just checked out the web site for the Royal Hideaway, that looks like one gorgeous place. I imagine that it is a few price points above where we stayed. I imagine the Italian place there was just ever so slightly better than the one at Xpu-Ha.

Edited April 17, 2003 by tighe (log)

[Marlene]

We also just returned from the Mayan Rivera where we stayed at the Royal Hideaway. All inclusive as well.  It's a small resort, just 200 rooms, with service and food like I've never experienced at an all inclusive. A big part of staying at the RH is the dining experience.  All of the restaurants are ala carte, the only buffet you will see is for breakfast and there's an ala carte choice for breakfast as well.

I just checked out the web sit for the Royal Hideaway, that looks like one gorgeous place. I imagine that it is a few price points above where we stayed. I imagine the Italian place there was just ever so slightly better than the one at Xpu-Ha.

It is reasonably pricey yes, although there are sometimes deals to be had. We went there two years ago, and then proceeded to visit a number of other resorts, including the RIU Palace and the Barcelo in Playa which always left us saying how much we missed the food and service at the RH. I understand Secrets is opening a resort near Playa that is supposed to rival the RH so we'll see. Certainly the biggest draw for us was the food. Not too tough to take either was the fact that they give you a nice little flag to plant in the sand anytime you want a drink

[Schielke]

Great stuff, good show!

I think we need to start lighting stuff on fire at the cocktail parties...

Ben