Friday, March 27, 2015

Street Food in Playa del Carmen

El Rey del Taco in Playa del Carmen, Mexico

We recently spent a blissful two weeks relaxing at the beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. When we weren't swimming in the ocean, chances were that we were getting something to eat. Playa is super touristy right by the beach, but you only have to get a few blocks inland to mostly get away from that.

We really enjoyed the street food in Playa. These are some of our favorites out of the spots we found.

El Rey del Taco
Arrachera and Campechanos El Rey del Taco in Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Pictured at the top of the post, El Rey del Taco serves up a variety of tacos, including arrachera (skirt steak) and campechanos (steak with chorizo). They are located on the southwest side of the parking lot of the Mega supermarket on 30th. They start business around 4pm, but there is a similar cart on the opposite side of the parking lot earlier in the day.

Kuni
Kuni in Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Also located on the southwest side of the Mega parking lot is Kuni, a seafood taco cart. Most of their business is making very tasty shrimp tacos:

Shrimp tacos at Kuni in Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Their fish tacos are also good. I'm not sure of their exact hours, but they were usually there around mid-day and didn't seem to go very late into the afternoon.

Salbutes
Salbutes in Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Salbutes are freshly deep-fried discs of dough (a mixture of masa and flour, I think), topped with a variety of condiments. We stumbled across a stand on Avenida 25 across from the Walmart that makes very fine examples indeed:

Salbutes in Playa del Carmen, Mexico

These ones are topped with shredded chicken (they also did ground meat and egg versions). We enjoyed these for breakfast twice - we found this place late in our stay or we would have eaten there even more. They also do empanadas - the same fried dough, but with a filling inside. We never got past the awesome salbutes, though...