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

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 11:09 am and is filed under Mexico, reviews, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.