06.08.07

Zihuat Eats

Posted in Latino, On The Open Road, Seafood at 5:18 am by Administrator

Take a wild guess at who gave us our best restaurant rec while we were in Zihuatanejo. Nope, not Andy Dufresne. It was the cabbie who picked us up at the airport and drove us to our hotel.

I sat through 4 years of Montgomery County Public School Spanish between 7th and 10th grades. And I lived in Madrid for 4 months while I interned at the US Embassy. But I didn’t pick up a lick of Spanish until my stint working with a bunch of Mexicans as a cheesemonger at Murray’s Cheese Shop.

And I didn’t realize how much I’d picked up until I got into that cab and began carrying on a conversation with that cabbie. I surprised myself – and Melissa – at how much I was able to communicate, because I’m borderline retarded (no joke; just ask Dr. Rita Brown from a town known as Oyster Bay Long Island who administered the tests) when it comes to language skills. I spoke enough to ask where to eat, and I understood enough to hear our cabbie say, in no uncertain terms, “La Sirena Gorda.”

But La Sirena Gorda is in downtown Zihuatanejo, and we were staying at Playa La Ropa up the coast from there. So for the first week, we mostly just ate what was within walking distance. Dona Prudencia, the restaurant attached to the super fancy Villa Del Sol Hotel, served the best food we found on the beach. Their jumbo coconut shrimp, with crusty shavings of coconut and a sweet mango dipping sauce, tasted like one of the amazing Thai dishes Melissa’s mom makes. Their ceviche came warm, and it looked and tasted as though the fish had been blanched before the lime juices cooked it. The menu claimed that it was prepared in the “traditional” way, but I’d never heard of warm ceviche. Either way, it was bomb.

And their shrimp in white wine and garlic sauce with mushrooms and rice put a smile on my mamasita’s face despite the intense nighttime heat and humidity.

Aside from that restaurant, the food on Playa La Ropa was uninspired. La Perla (the restaurant that people on the series of tubes that make of the interwebs said was the best on the beach) served fish taquitos that tasted like they were filled with comida gato.

To be fair, the chips and salsa were not only inspired, they were divinely inspired. The salsa was freshly chopped, not too spicy, and bursting with cilantro. Even the chips were better than I’d ever had. They were thicker than the chips I find in El Norte, with a bit of grease to them that gave them their own flavor. In fact, pretty much everywhere we went had the best chips and salsa of my life.

And I can’t express to you how blissful a feeling it is to order guacamole and

A: Not get charged $4 for a spoonful of it

Dos: Find great mounds of it beneath your pile of chips, so that you feel silly for having rationed it at the start

Quatro: Realize that even cat food tacos taste okay with a shit ton of guac and fresh salsa on top

When we finally made it into downtown Zihuatanejo, we were planning on hitting La Sirena Gorda, but the cabbie who brought us to town said it was touristy and that we should eat at this other place that I don’t think had a name. We gave it a shot because we were in no mood to search, and it looked like Mexicans were eating there. But, ONLY Mexicans were eating there. For some reason, we did not take into account what a place like this would do to our lower GIs.

The food was tasty though. We had fried chicken taquitos (the idea was brilliant although it could have been executed much better. Still, someone had better serve fried chicken tacos in New York because there is a market for that). We also had these messy soft corn tortilla things covered in beef, mayo, and tomatoes, and chicken enchiladas with verde sauce. Everything was covered in oaxaca cheese and shredded raw cabbage. I went crazy, ignoring the fact that I’d been brushing my teeth with bottled water in an effort not to get sick, and ate more raw cabbage (most likely not washed in Evian) than prudent. And I paid for it. Still, I maintain that it was worth it.

When we recovered a couple days later, we headed back into downtown Zihuat for dinner. And without even trying, we happened upon La Sirena Gorda.

It means “The Fat Mermaid” as you can see from the wooden sign in the foreground pointing tourists toward the Fat Mermaid Shop. Usually, tourist restaurants with gift shops are not where I like to eat when on vacation. But when I looked inside, I saw only Mexicans. And when I looked at the menu, I saw about a dozen varieties of fish tacos. Now, I think fish tacos are the greatest idea in the history of ideas. I can imagine that a truly great fish taco could be one of my favorite eating experiences ever. The concept is perfect. It is as though the guy who invented fish tacos was thinking of me when he did it.

But I’d never found that Platonic fish taco I imagined when I first heard about them a few years back (I’m an East Coaster. We’re lucky to get good Taco Bell). So when we sat down at La Sirena Gorda, I went all out. I basically ordered one of each taco on the menu.

The three types pictured above are Pibil (the two on the top left), smoked fish (middle), and carnitas (bottom right). The pibil tacos, with red onions, were the most impressive. The smoked fish tacos tasted Jewish, which, in my book, is good, but certainly not the Platonic fish taco for which I was searching. The carnitas fish taco won the award for weirdest as the menu proudly declared that it was fish perpared as though it were pork. And that’s exactly what it tasted like. The serenita taco had THREE types of chillis mixed into the fish, but it was, somehow, not very hot.

The white hot habenero hot sauce that the waiter warned us was “mas caliente” (he also warned us the Corona was mas fina) was, as Wolf Blitzer would say, so white and so hot. I loved it. Melissa LOVED it. . . maybe a little too much.

She paid for that too.

Five Borough Eatings Tours at w w w. Famous Fat Dave . c o m

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