TRIP: Playa Del Carmen Day 1

We're on vacation in Playa Del Carmen. Here's a view of the all inclusive resort. The resort has quite a few restaurants and bars. I was pre-warned that the food was "meh" and not something I should count on being a highlight. To my surprise we've run into quite a bit of good food. So I'll be chronicling it here.

I've finally found a nice way to distill a bunch of pictures of food down so that I'm not leaving a giant post.

First meal was at the Pelicano, it's a Caribbean fusion restaurant. My wife got a green salad, nice presentation but hard to eat. I got a octopus salad, it was marinaded in a sweet tomato dressing with fresh avocado. I had a cream of something soup I'll update with the name, my wife's seafood soup had a very prominent saffron flavor.

I ordered the zucchini gratin, I thought it was a large cut of zucchini covered in cheese it turns out it was stuffed with seafood (possibly the same as the seafood soup above)

For entree I had a marinated lamb shank and my wife had a seared scallop dish served over grilled papaya.

Next the asian themed restaurant, Asiana.  For the appetizer, chef presented tuna and melon skewer, the tuna tasted smoked it was definitely cooked in texture not raw. Salmon and tartar sauce roll, interesting not quite for me but it caught my attention on the menu. Spring roll with a strawberry sweet and sour sauce, I liked the use of strawberry in the sauce better than the standard sweet and sour. For a soup I had a Sake and rice soup, a lightly poached salmon with rice in a very nice fish stock broth.

I didn't get around to taking a picture of the menu so this is by memory. My wife got a fish and calamari in coconut curry. The fish and calamari were fried and the dish delicious, it could have used some rice to round it out. (Asian food and no rice?) My dish was a duck breast with a Hoisin sauce. The duck was a bit over cooked and as a result stringy.