Street food

I decided I needed to get a firmer grip on the taco scene and could only do that with some local help – so I went on a food tour this evening. There were only two of us on the tour so it was less tour and more chatting and walking about eating.

The main street of Playa del Carmen is little like Las Vegas, but if you go only a few streets away from the beach suddenly there are few tourists and the nature of the shops radically shifts. The shiny storefronts give way to practical, utulitarian places and the average height of the customer drops by 30cm. Our first stop was a small example of a chain that can be found throughout Mexico that sells gelatos and fruit juices. It was a good example of why I like food tours – I’m not sure that otherwise I’d have sampled the contents of the unnamed vats of liquid. They were all pretty yummy, although the local version of horchata was not a lot like the original I was so taken with in Valencia last year.

Tacos were the main game though. We started with a carnecita, which is renowned for being addictive, bought from a restaurant best described as a from a full of plastic tables packed with locals. Carnecita is the result of the brief period that Napolean stuck his fingers into Mexio; he delivered an Emperor that lasted four years and confit of pork that has lasted a lot longer.

Then it was a beef taco from a roadside stall. Against the backdrop of passing traffic we had a BBQ’d beef taco on golden corn tacos. Conclusion: corn tacos are far superior to the white ones. More beef followed at a different stall wherre a grizzled local comiserated through his impessive moustache at my inability to eat corriander.

Finally it was a marquesita for desert. The main thing about a marquesits is that its a bit like a thin, crisp ice-cream cone wrapped around ingredients like a crepe. (Billy Connolly has a joke about Mexican food that is basically no matter what you order the same fucking thing arrives – it’s just wrapped up differenly.) So the traditional marquesita, which is what we ate, is stuffed with caramel and edam cheese. Yes you read that correctly. It’s a uniuque combination that in my view will probably never escape the confines of Mexico.