During our time in this Riviera Maya city, we wanted to eat the best of the best. However, a look at food tours in the area saw that they mostly focused on tacos.
Now don’t get me wrong: I love a good taco and probably ate 50 of them over our three weeks in the country. However, there’s so much more to Yucatan food than just tacos!
Add that on to the fact that Playa Del Carmen isn’t ridiculously cheap, and a food tour was about $80/€80 for two people, we looked for something else. The items below will cost about $50/€50 total for two people instead!
So skip the tour money, move beyond tacos, and explore Playa Del Carmen by mouth with this self-guided, fully walkable food tour.
Quesaburria at El Compa
Your first stop was one of our favourites: quesaburria at El Compa. This unassuming street food stall is packed with locals and home to a mouthwatering quesaburria, a tortilla dipped in a special broth, pan-fried until crispy, and filled with slow-cooked shredded beef and cheese.
Once you’ve ordered at the main stove, you’ll be handed a plate (smartly covered in a plastic freezer bag to keep it clean, genius!) with your quesaburria.
Then, take it over to the right-hand side, where you can cover it with all the toppings you want. (I highly recommend adding loads of pickled red onion).
Biting into it, you’ll find the meat is delicious, juicy, tender, but still somehow light. The tortilla is bursting with meat and flavour, and they’re a measly 59 pesos each.
At the end, you pay at the topping station simply by telling them what you ate. Credit card facilities are available.
Psst! We really liked this stall because 1) it had heaps of locals (a great sign) but 2) the cooking and the money were handled by different people. That’s a great sign that a food stall takes its hygiene seriously!
Cochinita Pibil at La Cochi Loka
A five-minute walk away is our next stop: Cochinita pibil at La Cochi Loka.
Conchita is a traditional Yucatán dish made by marinating pork in citrus juice, achiote (annatto) paste, and spices, then slow-roasting it in banana leaves until tender. This family-run, informal restaurant has SUCH sweet customer service — and their cochinita is to die for.
Here, I highly recommend the panucho de cochinita pibil, a fried corn tortilla that is stuffed with refried black beans, and then the cochinita and cubed onion piled on top. The tortas, a type of sandwich in a baguette, also look amazing (yet, perhaps too filling with so many other places to go).
We found this place originally as a lunch spot, and ended up eating their three times over our week in Playa Del Carmen. We loved it!
Each panucho was 40 pesos and service is ultra-quick, with credit card facilities available.
Tostadas at Aguachiles
Wave goodbye to the conchitas and head another five to ten minutes down the road and around the corner to Aguachiles.
There are multiple Aguachiles restaurants in Playa Del Carmen, and while these restaurants are definitely a bit more catered towards tourists (that English menu is a dead giveaway), Aguachiles is home to some of the best seafood around.
Our item of choice here is the tostadas, a fried tortilla piled high with toppings. I highly recommend the mixed seafood ceviche variety, which is light, fresh, and in a tantalising lemon sauce. If you haven’t had ceviche before, it’s seafood that is cooked with acid, like lime or lemon, resulting in an incredible tangy flavour.
There are plenty of other tostada options, however, my partner ordered the tuna shiquito tostada and found it a bit disappointing.
Costa here are a bit higher at around 190 pesos per tostada, but they’re generous with the seafood and the vibe at the restaurant is very chill but fun. Card is available.
Local beers at Chela de Playa
You’re likely feeling pretty full at this point, so let’s take a break and head to Chela de Playa, a bustling bar with a laidback vibe that’s right next to a cenote in the middle of town.
This place has a rotating selection of beers on tap, beer flights for those who can’t choose just one, and a fantastic bespoke cocktail menu.
The service here is impeccable, there are card and board games if you want to take a longer break, and the atmosphere is 👌.
Plus, the staff are amazing. Hilariously (and embarrassingly), we dropped our only credit card through the slats of the deck and the manager grabbed a hammer and worked like Thor to pull up the deck boards and get it out for us. What a champion! (He got a great tip). Credit card is available.
Ceviche at El Pirata
Back on the food train, and being in a seaside town, our next stop is ceviche at El Pirata. You’ll find ceviche all around Playa Del Carmen, but La Pirata comes highly recommended.
Their mixed ceviche was refreshing and SO generous — we shared a small size between two people and it was more than enough. The large plate is full of shrimps, octopus, squid, and white fish, and La Pirata gives a complimentary appetiser of tortilla chips, which were the perfect crunchy accompaniment.
We paid 265 pesos for our shared dish. You’ll need to get here early, because this restaurant closes at 8 PM. Card facilities are available, service is friendly, and we loved the little pirate bandannas the staff wore. El Pirata indeed!
Aguachile at Ictio Fish House
We’re going for a little walk again, this time to the small but iconic Ictio Fish House. We stumbled upon this gem on one of our earlier nights in Playa and were immediately taken by the friendly waiters.
Here, there’s one things to order and it’s the aguachile. Aguachile is a kind of spicier, Mexican variant of ceviche, made with raw shrimp marinated in a blend of lime juice, chilli peppers, cilantro, and salt, often served with cucumber, red onion, and avocado.
The atmosphere here is delightful, particularly because it’s a smaller, more intimate restaurant. We can highly recommend the cocktails here too.
The aguachile here costs 189 pesos and card is (also!) available.
If you’re already full at this point, add it to your list for later.
Marquesitas from almost anywhere
You’re likely rolling along the Playa Del Carmen streets at this point, but if you can fit dessert, there’s only one option: marquesitas.
A marquesita is a dough baked in a flat pan that creates a kind of rolled up, thin and crunchy waffle. It’s then adorned with toppings, normally some combination of Nutella, cream cheese, strawberries, banana, oreos, or any number of other items.
There are marquesita food stalls on almost every corner around Playa Del Carmen’s Fifth Avenue. We chose one on Google Maps because it had good reviews, but really any is likely to be a good choice if it looks clean.
Our cream cheese and strawberry marquesita was 60 pesos and was crunchy, light, and delicious. No card available (but I’m sure some van somewhere offers it!).
That’s it! You’ve walked half of the inner-city, fulfilled your taste-buds wildest dreams, and could do it all yourself on this self-guided Playa del Carmen food tour.
Got a to-die-for place that you think should be added? Got an update on one of these restaurants? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
gallivantations 
thank you
LikeLike