Mexican Breakfast in Playa del Carmen
Updated: Oct 2
Imagine waking up one morning in the Riviera Maya. The sun is shining because, of course, this is the Caribbean, the beach looks beautiful, and you're hungry. Not just any kind of hungry: you're craving a Mexican breakfast in Playa del Carmen.
You think of chilaquiles. A classic. Triangular pieces of fried tortilla covered in salsa, either spicy or mild, depending on how much you want to risk your morning and your tongue, two little eggs on top, crema, cheese, and a little onion. The kind of breakfast that promises two things: a full belly, and enough fuel to carry you through the day.
A few blocks from Playa 72, we found a place we somehow overlooked. And I say “somehow” because once you find it, it's hard to understand how we ever missed it.
As soon as you arrive, you can see a huge heart that says what most foreigners who come here eventually find themselves saying sooner or later: I love Mexico. And after declaring it, the restaurant does something even better: it invites you inside their home.
To get to your table, you have to walk down a long hallway decorated with Mexican motifs, with little tables tucked here and there and enough details to make you slow down without even realizing it. At the end, the hallway opens into a patio that seems to have taken its job of reminding you that you’re surrounded by Maya heritage very seriously.
There is wood, greenery, rustic furniture, and little corners that seem to have a story of their own. You don't really know what that story is, but it doesn't matter. The place has that dangerous quality some beautiful restaurants have: you arrive hungry, and suddenly you want to eat there all the time.
As we sit down, the house welcomes us with a little chocolate cake topped with cream. We have it with coffee while trying to decide what to order, which is one of the hardest tasks in any Mexican restaurant: choosing just one dish when, in reality, you want to try everything. So we decide to take the Desayuno Yo Amo México and the Chilaquiles.
Both dishes arrive in generous portions, with that combination of flavors that immediately feels familiar: tomato, onion, chile, corn tortillas and, on the table, for the brave ones, a serving of habanero salsa that reminds us the Yucatán Peninsula does not mess around when it comes to heat.
The Yo Amo México eggs are served on a corn tortilla with crispy edges and a soft center, all topped with a layer of cheese, pickled red onion, and covered in a red salsa that isn't particularly spicy, allowing you to enjoy the flavors without the chile stealing the spotlight.
The chilaquiles, meanwhile, are big. And here we did something I highly recommend if, like us, you can't choose between red and green salsa: we ordered them divorciados.
That way, we could try both. And here comes our verdict: the green salsa wins. It has a good consistency with a more pronounced flavor. The red salsa is good too, although it's a little more diluted and, by comparison, leaves less of an impression.
The totopos are crisp and slowly absorb the salsa, so each bite changes slightly as the dish progresses. At first, there's that crunch of freshly dressed tortilla; then the salsa comes through, and a few minutes later, some of the totopos have completely surrendered to it. I think that's part of the beauty of good chilaquiles, they don't taste exactly the same from beginning to end.
We finish breakfast and still have some coffee left, so we stay a little longer, and we take the time to notice every corner: the planters made from recycled materials, the little house of the alux, the Mayan protector, the children's table, the swing, the woven branches of the tree beneath which we're sitting...
We stay just a little longer to keep dreaming together about all the places we still have to visit, and all the flavors we have yet to discover.
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