of course, whenever you go to a different country, one with it's own famous cuisine (and drinks), you must try as much as you can, mexico was no different for me. one thing to note though, tacos are probably not like the ones you are familiar with, they are simply small hot tortillas (flat) that you wrap your food in, even tacos el dorado (fried tacos) are rolled up, so you probably won't find your crunchy, easy to hold tacos in mexico. burritos are supposedly texan mexican, and nachos and fajitas as well, you may find them, but they probably will be different to what you expect. onto the food, a lot of the time we relied on the lp and rough guides to give us places to go, but at least as often, we just walked into a place that looked good. also note, that pretty much every meal comes with free tortillas (hot as in warm) or tostadas (toasted tortillas), or chilaquiles (nacho-like, broken tostadas), or all of the above, these can be eaten however you like, but i found best used as a wrap for the main. regarding salsa, usually, the green one is the hot one, the red is simply mild, and the further east you go, the hotter it tends to get. for example, in mexico city the green salsa was quite mild, while in merida, the green salsa would leave some heat on my lips (and cause a runny nose), very nice!!
with the exception of a couple places, most places we ate at were pretty good (or adequate in more secluded locales). i'll talk about the drinks afterwards, that's a good collection i have 
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starting in mexico city, the only place that i can really remember is this little taqueria on the corner of rep. de chile and cinco de mayo near the zocalo, very tasty tacos and tortas (with chorizo), no english, cooked fresh on a pan visible to all. chicken and cheese (pollo con queso) tacos were ridiculously tasty, and the chorizo torta as well, very cheap too. the only other place i remember was from the lp, cafe el popular, i had an enchilada there, it was ok, nothing special.
moving on to papantla, we ate at a couple places, first two in the lp, plaza pardo and la hacienda (breakfast), both good places with good views of the zocalo, i was happy with both of them. supposedly, alf and ozzy got sick from eating chicken at the hotel restaurant (totonaca i think) with the set lunch (comida corrida), i reckon they were just a bit weak 
, i had the beef with no such reaction.
me and alf had one meal in xalapa, it was a hamburger at a little place near the hostel, it was pretty much like a typical hamburger (not mcdonalds, but like the ones you make yourself or get at the fish and chip shop), and cheap. i think alf might've got sick from his, though i had no issue, ozzy was still sick.
in puebla, we pretty much just ate down at the zocalo at random restaurants around the square. we went to a seafood restaurant, and i had a mystery meal (we didn't have the phrasebook), ostiones a la diabla, is in fact oysters with tomato sauce and cheese, as you can tell from the picture, it's a lot of oysters, about 25 in total, i got through about 20, the cheese made it edible i think . alf got prawns and rice and had about two bites 
. we also went to vittorio's, the italian place in the lp, had pizza (mexican of course (with frijoles)) , it was nice, but i have a suspicion that the altitude may have shrunk my stomach, as we couldn't even finish a medium and a small pizza between us.
on to oaxaca, we pretty much just ate around the zocalo (lots of hawkers and buskers), we had one meal at the taco inn (a franchise) where they had western style alambres (western style in terms of taste), which were good probably because they were salty or had msg in them or something. we also went to a pizza shop a bit north of the zocalo, it looked busy, but it wasn't, and service was slow (and we were in a rush). the meal was ok in the end, a margarita pizza for ozzy (i remember cos i had some), i had some kind of chicken dish. while i didn't try any of the funny flavoured ice creams here, i did have a choc chip ice cream that was very nice.
san cristobal, we had lunch and watched the champions league at a little place on guadalupe, then i had a big roll at the revolution bar north of the zocalo, which was good.
in palenque, we pretty much just ate at a couple places in the lp, they were fine, nothing special, maras, restaurant maya, and las tinajas.
we ate only at the restaurant calakmul at our hotel in xpujil, i half wanted to try one of the places down the road, but we didn't, i'm pretty sure the kids waiting on tables weren't also the ones cooking 
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in tulum, the first night we ate at this place on the same block as the weary traveler, it was on the corner, the waiter we got was real friendly and chatty (supposedly his name was david as well), a little pricey, but the service was good. we went to charlies (which is in the lp), but we regretted it after about ten minutes of waiting for our menus (it started raining so we were stuck). the service was ridiculously slow, and though the food was well cooked, my chicken mole was quite difficult to consume. the chicken was fine, but it was soaked in this mole that had this real herby (oriental mediciny) taste, and was really not to my liking, alf liked his chili relleno, and ozzy was happy with his food. the service was atrociously slow though (possibly caused by a big group of americans that had come straight from las vegas or so it appeared).
valladolid had a couple of nice places we ate at, hosteria del marques, fancy but reasonably priced, and tasty, as well as the food court at the bazar municipal (both in the lp), had some very tasty and cheap dishes.
merida had my favourite dish for the whole trip i think, at marlin azul, i had the (special) fillet of fish, a creamy buttery, cheesy fish fillet baked with vegetables and rice, very filling and tasty. we also had pizza at vito corleone (mexican of course, no frijoles this time), good pizzas, and two big square medium pizzas will do for three (provided at least one person has some guts ). sorbets at el colon are ridiculously good, especially the peach (durazno) one, melon is also good. last and certainly least, cangrejito (as promoted by lp), was just plain crap, we wandered in, the guy told us to sit down, we sat there for about ten minutes (while the chef was making seafood tacos right in front of us) making eye contact with the guy that told us to sit down, and nothing. we never got a menu nor any service (it wasn't busy), so we got up and went to a western style restaurant at the square.
in guadalajara, we tried a few places form the lp, mariscos galeana, i had a very nice camarones de ceviche (chilled prawns), goat stew (birria) at birrieria las nueve esquinas, which was nice, though the stew was a little confusing for me as i was eating the goat meat in tortillas (drink the stew i guess), and crazy tacos (and hot!!) at los faroles, i just got five normal ones first (thanks to the waiter speaking english ), then i tried one each with pig snout, tripe, and head meat. they weren't great, snout was very fatty, the head and tripe were pretty low in flavour, chorizo was best.
onto the drinks, which is what you've all been waiting for, i'm happy to say that i managed to sample every mexican beer i found (the brand anyway, not each individual different label) at least once. the one that i saw that i missed was bucanero (but that's cuban anyway), so here is the list of beers i tried, i won't list them in order of preference, as they are pretty similar for the most part.
i think the company that makes corona pretty much owns most of these other beers, but i have pictures of all of them . also learned that michelada is probably not the best order with beer (too much salt and lemon juice). i won't go on about tequila as that'll be expanded upon in the jalisco post, but i also tried a couple of margaritas and some straight tequila.
that's it, overall, very good impressions of mexican cuisine, it's much less salty than you expect (from the americanised version), and very fresh and tasty. the drinks are great, two dollar mexican beers, where else in the world could you get that?
picture of the massive plate of oysters that i couldn't quite get through, i don't think it's the type of dish that one person is meant to eat by themself.
#33 dtra (david tran)
Last edited at 2:42 18th-may-2008
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