Puerto Vallarta 2006

What a wonderful place. This restaurant/bar is located along the beach just south of the Rio Cuale in the old town/romantic zone. The restaurant maintains several tables under palapas on the beach and the main building is very open air, clean, and inviting. All this and the food and drinks are fantastic with a menu that consists of true Mexican regional food. They go to great pains to represent true Mexican cuisine without the flat and flavorless fajitas (they're more Tex than Mex) or blah and boring burritos.

We had several of the items on the menu and loved each one. The Garnachas, a small corn tortilla dipped in red enchilada sauce, grilled a tad, then topped with some grilled seafood, are so delicious we had them several times. A flash fried fish that is lightly battered and flash fried, served along with a habanero salsa for dipping... yummm. Chicken something-or-other with a 12 ingredient sauce has a very complex sauce that has a bunch of flavors that blend into a sublimely delicious dish. Red Snapper Tikin Xic is a catch for certain. Fresh whole fish with an achiote chili based sauce, I think. I can say a lot of things about the food, all of them high praise. After eating at several of the more hyped-up places in town, this is by far the best food we had during our entire trip. Outstanding? Fantastic? Exceptional? Yes to all the above. Most appetizers were in the $5-$7 range and most entrees were in the $10 to $15ish range. Combine the quality with a very reasonable price and you've got a winning combination.

Oh...and the mojitos. The most outstanding mojitos in town, bar none. Land during happy hour (12-2 and 4-6 daily ,except on Monday when they're closed). Happy hour drinks are 2-for-1 (unlike some of the joints across from the malecon. More on that in another review).

Anyhoo...we had the best mojitos we'd had all week. We had the best food we'd had all week. We had the best, most relaxing time we'd had all week. You need to put this restaurant/bar on your list of must eat/drink at places. Go have some mojitos and garnachas, soak in a lovely sunset as you sit there sipping and munching away, and have a great meal. If nothing else, at least go have a mojito on the beach and chill. You'll be glad you did.

Ambiance - Class - Style - Haute Cuisine - Excellent Wine list - Flavor - Presentation

These are some of my impressions from our dinner here. The restaurant is fantastic with very classy interior and a staff that was very attentive and paid close attention to every detail.

We arrived early and took a seat in the bar area to have a glass of wine and a martini. There simply weren't any other places we were at where I thought I'd get a proper martini. I got a very proper martini here. The wine list by the glass has probably 25 wines on it of varying price/quality/origins, all available by the flight if you wanted to do some tasting.

Right on time one of the hostesses came and got us and seated us at our table. Now, the dining room is something to behold. At the far end was a large table (8-12 people, maybe) which has all these glass ball/bulbs hanging down around it. This gave that table a special ambiance...not to say the entire restaurant didn't have it but this one area stuck in my mind.

Now, this is sad. I can't remember much about my meal other than it was steak and it was fantastic. My wife had a sea scallop dish. Again, we were steeping in the moment and I didn't completely geek out and take notes (although I wish I had). Both of our dinners were exceptional, simply put. They also had a fine international wine list consisting of all major areas of production with a heavier leaning to French wines. Costs on the wine list went from $15 up to $how-much-money-do-you-have.

Do I recommend this dinner for everybody? No, not everybody. I think the cuisine here would be lost on most children less than mid-teens. Also, unless you're into actually tasting your food and using your palate, this may not be for you either. This last one may have you guffawing me, "of course I taste my food," you say. But ask yourself, do you taste it as it simply passes over your tongue or do you savor the bite and explore the texture, flavor, and depth?

As to be expected from a dining experience of this caliber, it didn't come cheap. Again with the American prices. In this particular case, though, I had no qualms ponying up the pesos. This is the upper crust of dining with remarkable food. Reservations highly recommended.

We met friends here for lunch one afternoon. The location is not unlike a lot of restaurants in the area. It's a non-obtrusive sign and a door on the street. Nothing much to see and easy to miss if you're not actually looking for it. Well, we knew about where it was and with minimal walking around, we found it. We were seated right away since there wasn't a lot of business at the time. The place is clean and very interestingly decorated with a fish/reef theme. Colorful and kind of fun looking.

The menu, if the name doesn't give it away or any of the propaganda didn't clue you in, is primarily about shrimp. They have several preparations and you can buy your shrimp by the kilo. The coconut shrimp was very, very good as was the guacamole, which they make table side on a per-order basis. The shrimp tacos were also very tasty and all the food was quite filling.

On the down side of things was the cost. As with a lot of places north of the Rio Cuale, we found prices to be very much the same as we'd pay back home for things. That was really the only catching point for this restaurant as well. Food = good. Price = not as good, me thinks.

Buyer beware.
We were strolling the Malecon looking for someplace to take a load off and have a few (read many) drinks and were herded into Club69 by the street barkers. The place seemed OK enough for us and we landed a table right in the front window. We could watch folks strolling the sidewalk/Malecon; a good location for certain. Another reason we went in was the 2-for-1 special. Sounds good enough. We sat down and the "shot girls" showed up and started pouring shots down me and a friend's throat. They were tasty and we both got our faces placed in cleavage as a finale. The shot girls proceeded to do the same to our respective wife/girlfriend. So far so good. Oh wait--they wanted $18. Again, not evil except we weren't asked if we even wanted said shots. Lesson learned: don't make eye contact with the shot girls. Keep your mouth shut. Be adamant about it.

The club gets very loud with a mix of dance and '80s remixed music. It was a kick in the pants and we were having a great time. We kept sipping drinks, laughing, watching the folks stroll by and fending off the chiclet kids that worked the sidewalk in front of the club.

We had a great time until it was time to go. We had a $350 between 4 of us. Needless to say we were absolutely floored. There was no way we could have consumed that much in the way of drinks. Unfortunately we were slightly buzzed and weren't in a position to recount precisely how many drinks we'd consumed, although we did notice that the 2-for-1 drinks were priced at a price that was about twice as expensive as they would be at a bar/restaurant off the Malecon. Everything we were sold was at a high premium price. I'm not saying we were sober but we weren't as hammered as I'd expect to be after drinking my fourth of the bill we were presented with. We argued a little bit but didn't have a strong enough position so we simply paid our bill (no tip) and left, never to return.

So, for any of you that are planning on reveling in a club along the Malecon, I have a couple of words of wisdom for you. I'm giving it freely when it cost us a nice wad of cash:
-Find out exactly how much drinks cost in whatever establishment you're in, especially if they're doing a 2-for-1 deal, which is very common in PV in general.
-Count your drinks carefully. If you're in for the long haul, take visible track on the back of a receipt or something. Just don't forget to add a hash mark every time you get a drink. Make sure your server sees what you're doing.
-Be ware the 'shot girls' cuz they'll just start dumping stuff down your throat before
you can even acknowledge their presence. Then they'll want your $$.

Of course, while on vacation, you want to do some shopping. Depending on what you're after, there are several ways to go about doing this and having a good time doing it. You can practice a Mexican hobby of the haggle, or go someplace that just has prices of things and that's how much they cost.

You'll find that most places near the Malecon are all fixed price places. There are a whole slew of jewelry stores (opal and silver are the most common), trinket shops, and a lot of art galleries in this area. Most of the trinket shops all have very similar stuff...painted glassware, pottery, crappy tourist junk, shot glasses, etc. Jewelery stores tend to specialize in silver goods. As you've probably read somewhere or another, make sure it's stamped .925 to indicate the purity. If it's not, don't buy it. The art galleries are pretty fantastic. They tend to showcase Mexican artists of every genre. There is a lot of beautiful art available if that's what you're shopping for. Towards the far south end of the Malecon, across the street from the Palacio Principal and its plaza, there are usually local artists that set up their works and sell them right there. The prices are quite reasonable and they're usually willing to work with you on price. They also have some very beautiful work that to my untrained eye had a good price/quality ratio. Along the Malecon you'll encounter a lot of people walking up to you with trinkets and cheap jewelery in hand. You can do some haggling with them, although since we didn't buy anything from any of them, I don't know how far you'll get.

I was most impressed with the art at the south end of the Malecon but that aside there are but a few good deals to be found if you look for them and I wasn't overly impressed with the items their prices.

So you've wandered the length of the Malecon and are finishing perusing the stuff at the south end. Now it's time to head about four blocks inland and check out the flea market which is along the north side of the Rio Cuale. What a zoo! Lots and lots of trinkety stuff in row after row of booth—like shops inside a block-sized building. Everybody is trying to work you to get you into their shop. We found that all the shops had mostly the same stuff in them with about 5% difference between them. Here's where you get to practice your haggling. Words to live by in the flea market, "Muy caro" "demasiado caro" both basically meaning too expensive. There are also a couple of shops here that have some pretty decent leather goods but most of the rest have tourist junk; shot glasses, ashtrays, cheap T-shirts, etc. This is the same stuff you found on the Malecon but now you get to argue over the price. Yay Fun!

South of the Rio Cuale in the Romantic zone/old town, there's a couple of great stores I highly recommend.

First and foremost is the tile place, Mundo de Azulejos (http://www.talavera-tile.com). They have all manner of tile and pottery from simple individual tiles to wall-sized murals in tile. Pottery runs the gamut from vases, lamp bases, to full table place settings. All of the above is individually hand painted and is quite beautiful. One of the exceptionally cool things about this store is that they'll make custom tiles for you. This service takes 2 days so if you want your own special tiles, think about it ahead of time and take that picture or saying with you and have them make you up your own, personalized tiles.

Mata Ortiz (http://www.mataortiz-pottery.com) pottery gallery. Not the least expensive things on earth but so fantastically stunning in the detail on each unique piece. Even if you're not interested in buying anything from here, go anyway and look at the works up close and in person. They're simply stunning. The time and effort put into each piece has got to be extreme and the aesthetics of the pieces on display were the most beautiful stuff we saw during our shopping rampage. The shop is located in the Romantic zone/old town at Lazaro Cardenas 268-A.