La Palapa

Since we had such a fun time at Tacos El Gordo, we decided to venture outside of the resort for another dinner. The entire family didn’t come (Sammy was too tired to join) but we went to the downtown area and ended up finding a great restaurant, La Palapa, right on the beach. The downtown area is quite fun and lively and has a lot of little vendors selling Mexican street corn and little desserts (actually, it looked like they purchased cakes from a Sam’s Club, sliced it, and sold it by the slice). We walked for a long time before finding La Palapa but Ken insisted on going there because he read good reviews beforehand.

Charley, me and Ken after finding the restaurant:

We were all pretty hungry by the time we found the restaurant and were very eager to order. The restaurant is located in the romantic zone of the boardwalk and it was dimly lit so my photos aren’t the best (but use your imagination!)

For an appetizer, we ordered mussels in a red pepper cream sauce:

The mussels were gigantic and really delicious – I usually make mussels with a lemon butter and wine reduction but this was a really decadent preparation.

Ken and I shared the tortilla soup:

We really fell in love with tortilla soup while we were down in Mexico and ended up ordering it at every restaurant that served it. This preparation was my favorite because it had the crunchy texture of the tortilla chips.

We all shared taquitos with jicama salad:

We also shared duck soft tacos smothered in a cream sauce:

For my main entree, I ordered the sea bass covered in macadamia nut:

And Ken ordered the braised short ribs:

Service was a little slow but there was live jazz music to keep us entertained as we waited for our food to arrive. The portions were very large and we ended up ordering way too much (especially since we were eating so much at the resort that we were accustomed to ordering multiple courses for a meal).

After dinner, we walked along the boardwalk and Ken realized he misplaced his blackberry (and had to run back to the restaurant where the waiter had luckily picked it up). We had a fun time at the restaurant and really enjoyed our meal and our evening in the city.