Located two doors down from Posada Tonala (the place where I stayed) on the main street in La Manzanilla is Jolanda’s. Specializing in European and Southeast Asian Cuisine, Jolanda’s is probably the most eclectic restaurant in town. Jolanda, the co-proprietor and her husband Leon have a most interesting story about how they ended up in La Manzanilla, but that is another story in its own right. Jolanda spent 9 months in Ao Nang, Thailand in 2001, and was trained in all styles of Thai cookery by a renowned gourmet chef who owns the Laughing Gecko Bungalows. Since the chef was shorthanded, he allowed Jolanda to work for him for 9 weeks.

Jolanda’s has legions of fans and is one of the most popular restaurants in town. As someone who loves spicy Thai cuisine, I decided to sample Jolanda’s her curried tofu dish on my first night in town. While the curry was fairly tasteful, I was a little disappointed that it did not have any vegetables, that usually accompany this type of dish. Upon Jolanda’s suggestion, I ordered a side dish of red cabbage. My 2nd time there, I had a tasty homemade tofu burger which was loaded with tomatoes, onions and lettuce. In addition, I had mustard soup, a traditional Dutch peasant dish. The soup was a little too rich in my opinion, but maybe that’s just the way it is supposed to be prepared. The menu is varied and there are lots of yummy non-vegetarian dishes to choose from. As far as the service goes, Leon is the headwaiter and he is very attentive to the needs of his customers.

Jolanda’s has a very quirky and artsy ambiance, exhibiting a variety of paintings, ceramics and indigenous arts and crafts from all Mexico. On Wednesday nights, they have a special Rice Table (Reservations only). During the season, the upstairs dining room is often jamming on Rice Table night.

My reviews of three of the restaurants that cater to gringos in La Manzanilla.…

#1 El Quetzal
This French owned restaurant specializes in crepes. On two separate occasions, I had dinner there and on both occasions I had a vegetarian crepe filled with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and peppers. It was very tasty with large, generous portions. A small salad and some French bread came with the entree. I think the cost was about 5.50USD. Service was fairly good. The owner plays a different style of music every night- one night is reggae, another night it might be classic jazz or blues. On my last night in town, I returned to El Quetzal with a Mexican friend of mine and I had two very powerful and delicious margaritas. Needless to say, I felt a bit happy, and slightly intoxicated afterwards. Definitely a good value for the money!

#2 El Girasol Cafe© and Bistro
A carefree outdoor café located directly across the street from the zocalo, El Girasol is a wonderful place for breakfast. Not a bad choice for dinner either! They make their own pastries and serve shade grown organic coffee. The fruit salad with or without yogurt and muesli was pretty good and contained a variety of fruits in season. Portion sizes were pretty generous and service was friendly. As a real bonus, the cafe had free Wifi on a secured digital network for patrons of the café. I had breakfast there 7 of the 9 days that I was there (on Sundays the café is closed) and had dinner there on two occasions - the first time, I had a wonderful Mediterranean-spinach salad with feta cheese and vinaigrette dressing along with a bowl of tortilla soup with avocados (completely vegetarian). I guess you could say that I liked El Girasol a lot! The fact that the owner of the cafe, Davison Collins, is a dedicated environmentalist and is active in conducting ecological tours of the nearby mangroves was another reason for me to patronize this cafe. It can get kind of noisy on Friday nights and on Saturdays, when the music concession on the zocalo is playing their Mexican hip-hop CD’s at a deafening volume! Ouch!

#3 Coco Loco
A beachside restaurant, Coco Loco was taken over recently by an English chap by the name of Jason, his Italian buddy and a well versed Mexican chef from San Miguel de Allende. At the time I visited Coco Loco, the new management team were busy giving Coco Loco a complete makeover. The new menu will emphasize gourmet pasta dishes and seafood. Upon some encouragement from Jason to give his restaurant a try, I went over to Coco Loco one night for dinner. I had a vegetarian Pasta Primavera - the cost was about $7.00USD. While the pasta dish was good and tastefully seasoned, the service could use some improvement.

Coming up is Dining around in La Manzanilla (Part 2) - A look at Jolanda’s

I don’t pretend to be a professional restaurant critic, but as a strict vegetarian and health nut, I am a very harsh critic of restaurants and I have very high standards. To me there are five important elements that I use to evaluate a restaurant .

* Food- How the food tastes and quality of preparation
* Aesthetics -The presentation of the food
* Service - attentiveness and attitude of waiters and staff
* Ambiance - décor and layout of the restaurant
* Value - equating the whole dining experience in terms of value for the
money

What makes things a little more complicated for yours truly is that I’m 90% vegan (a vegetarian who refrains from eating eggs and all dairy products). Also I lean toward places that use strictly organic produce, even if it costs me extra money.

While I was in La Manzanilla for 10 days, I had all my meals at four different restaurants; considering that there are approximately 8 restaurants that are geared for the “gringo business” in this small town, I sampled 50% of the available places. Keep in mind, my evaluation is strictly subjective and it may differ from your experience and other patrons of the reviewed restaurants. All I can do is be honest, right?

The four restaurants I patronized ranged from the eclectic Southeast Asian and European Cuisine of Jolanda’s, the wholesome filled crepes of El Quetzal, the carefree El Girasol Bistro and Bakery to the nouvelle Italian cuisine of Coco Loco.

To follow in a subsequent post, my reviews. Stay tuned…

It was a balmy, tropical Saturday evening. The town square was very busy this night - concessions lined the perimeter with merchants selling a potpourri of toys, CDs and DVDs, T-shirts, snacks and ice cream while children frolicked in this festive atmosphere, many of them gravitating towards the portable playground with giant slide and a small trampoline. Surveying the whole scene, I noticed a young lady showing slides and addressing a group of over 25 young children in Spanish. Inching closer to get a better idea what was happening, I realized that the young children were viewing a special presentation on the ecology of sea turtles. The teacher was instilling in these small children an environmental ethos and a love of nature. Furthermore, most of the children would probably become advocates of not only protecting the sea turtles but of safeguarding fragile ecosystems - mangroves, coastal estuaries and fisheries of the area - from greedy developers and urban development. Oh, I forget to mention - this story took place in La Manzanilla, a small but growing beach town cum tourist resort located on the southern edge of the Bay of Tenacatita on Mexico’s popular Costa Alegre.

While surveying the nearby mangroves on the northern edge of town, home of a very substantial population of American Alligators, I noticed a very interesting poster obviously designed by a young child from the community. My heart was warmed see that the children of La Manzanilla were becoming Environmental Advocates at such a tender age. There still is hope for our planet…..

I love the peacefulness and quiet of La Manzanilla. However, while having breakfast at El Girasol on my first Saturday morning in this small town, the ’ peace and quiet’ was decidely disrupted . Without any advance notice, I was overwhelmed by some deafening Mexican hip-hop music emanating from the zocalo (town square) across the street from the café. It seems that on Saturday and special holidays, the zocalo becomes a mini shopping bazaar, with concessions selling anything from novelty items, T-shirts to CDs and Videos. The ‘music store’ was playing the music at such a high volume in order to attract customers. I was tempted to say, Will you please turn down the volume! Oh well…

In addition, the tranquility during the late afternoon hours (especially at the end of the week), is often interrupted when a flatbed truck rolls through town with a guy making announcements through an amplified bullhorn about some sort of show or event that’s happening in nearby Melaque or Barra de Navidad. This is Mexico…..

This small town is virtually dead after 10:00PM - the streets are relatively deserted and all six tourist restaurants - Jolanda’s, El Girasol, Palapa Joes, Martins, La Azteca and Casa de Las Flores - close at that time. There are no stand-alone bars, cantinas or nightclubs in this town, although Palapa Joes has a full service bar and from time to time they have a Live Mic Night, where resident Gringos and snowbirders can get up on stage and either make a fool of themselves or provide some fairly good entertainment. Needless to say, after 10:00PM, La Manzanilla is almost like ghost town.

Occasionally, Jolanda’s, a popular restaurant that specializes in Southeast Asian and European cuisine, has special parties and functions. When I was in La Manzanilla, Jolanda’s had a special dance party featuring all the golden oldies from the Baby Boomer’s Era. Jolanda’s rocked the town until 12 midnight with the likes of the Rolling Stone’s ‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Start Me Up’, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ and ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ to Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’ and ‘Wild Night’, Creedence Clearwater’s ‘Proud Mary’ and ‘Stuck in Lodi’ and with popular disco hits like Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’ and Murray Head’s famous ‘One Night In Bangkok’.

As a prelude to the Baby Boomer’s Dance Party, Jolanda’s had a special showing of a 90-minute movie/travelogue by Bert Sacre, which chronicled his fascinating 20 month odyssey from Holland to La Manzanilla. Entitled ‘The Road to La Manzanilla’, the movie was very unique and exhibited the vast artistic and compositional skills of Bert. I was literally amazed that all the fantastic images were taken with Bert’s Canon 5 megapixel pocket camera. Spliced in with the digital pictures were some very quirky video clips and the whole production was backed by an amazing musical soundtrack. Great Job, Bert!

While relaxing on the beach my first day in La Manzanilla, an ice cream vendor on wheels passed by playing a very quirky tune from the 1960’s. During the rest of my stay there, I would hear this tune over and over again whenever there was an ice cream vendor nearby, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of the tune. While having breakfast at El Girasol on my third day there, I asked two middle-aged ladies from the USA (and seasonal residents of this small town), if they could identify the tune. Of course, one of the ladies replied - the name of the tune is ‘Alley Cat’, a popular instrumental tune from the early 1960’s. Believe it or not, whenever I think of La Manzanilla now, I hear this Alley Cat tune in my head.

Factoid: Alley Cat won a Grammy Award for the Best Rock & Roll Record Of 1962.

While I was in the small town cum beach resort of La Manzanilla located on Mexico’s popular Costa Alegre, I met a very colorful character by the name of ‘Detroit Dave’. A carpenter and building contractor by trade, Dave relocated to this small beach town in the mid 1980’s. At that time, there were just a limited number of Gringo colonists living in this small relatively obscure village. Dave, who hails from Detroit, Michigan, makes the claim of being the first Gringo (a vernacular term used to describe Americans and Canadians in Mexico) to reside full time in La Manzanilla. According to Dave, all the rest of the Gringos in this small beach town at that time were ‘snowbirders’, a term used to describe people who migrate to the tropics to escape the cold winter months, only to return home at the onset of the unbearable hot (and sometimes very wet) summer months.

Somewhat of a historian, Dave explained to me how the earthquake and tsunami of 1995 generated a lot of interest and curiosity about the area, especially among Americans and Canadians. This led to a mini-invasion of gringos to the area. Falling in love with beautiful beaches and landscapes of the region, some of these visitors from the north ended up buying up land and property. After the Internet became a mainstream phenomenon in the 1ate 1990’s, the floodgates really opened up as more and more gringos found out about the beauty of the Tenacatita Bay Region. During the ensuing years up to the present, La Manzanilla has become somewhat of a boomtown as more foreigners flocked to the area, many building vacation homes in the hills overlooking the Bay.

During the dry and relatively pleasant winter months from November to the end of April, the gringo population swells to well over 500 people, most of them snowbirders. The number of gringos who have made La Manzanilla their permanent home and reside all year around is estimated at 40-60 people, most of them retirees. As in most small communities, most of the full-time gringo residents in La Manzanilla know each other.

As Dave explained, after the influx of gringos to the area, there were so many Daves in town that most of the gringos named Dave came up with nicknames so they wouldn’t be confused with all the other Daves. ‘Detroit Dave’ used to go by the name of ‘Carpenter Dave’, but changed his moniker as several more carpenters by the name of Dave settled in town. During my short time there, I met ‘Kayak Dave’, ‘Swinger Dave’, ‘Beatnik Dave’ and ‘Loudmouth Dave’. How many more Daves are there in this town?

FYI, it is estimated that there are about 2,500 indigenous inhabitants currently living in La Manzanilla