What is the worst place to eat?

[mstevens]

I find it fascinating to hear all the bad meal comments on various places.

I really wanted to like Bahia del Caribe, the fishermen's cooperative restaurant on 5a Av. I failed in that attempt. From my TA review:

We tried Bahia del Caribe due to several recommendations. We should have skipped it. Our plan was to get whole fried lionfish. When we went, they had nothing except lionfish filets. We all love lionfish, so that seemed OK. There was an appetizer of lionfish in escabeche that was quite good and seafood soup full of bones and partial heads that was tasty if unappetizing in appearance.

The lionfish was simply awful, which I hadn't thought possible. Half our orders came out nearly 20 minutes before the other half. Although some had ordered alla plancha (grilled) and some al mojo de ajo (with garlic), all were completely identical despite the waiter's insistence they were not. The fish was so tough it could not be cut with a fork or a table knife.

I'll give it 2 stars just for the appetizer.

Although the food was bad, at least the service was terribly slow.​

Apparently, some people like. I think it'll probably be quite a while before I give it another try.

I also wanted to like La Rumba. When I went there to review it they may have been having an off night, but if so it was quite off:

We went to La Rumba on a drizzly evening when we were the only customers. One of our party is a native Spanish speaker.

Recorded music was so loud that we couldn't hear each other. We were finally able to get them to turn it down, but it remained pretty unpleasant until they turned it down a second time.

Drinks were fine and we eventually ended up with good mojitos.

Service was quite problematic. Our first waiter appeared unable to understand anything we said (including the native Spanish speaker. The second seemed to have trouble understanding our order. For example, when the native Spanish speaker ordered tostones de plátano macho (fried green plantains) the waiter thought he'd ordered totopos (tortilla chips). He at least was able to figure out our drink order. My order of a Cuban sandwich didn't arrive at all until after I re-ordered. Service was very slow, which given the fact that our table of 4 constituted every customer in the place is hard to explain.

Masitas de puerco were excellent - some of the best we've ever had. Most of the rest was forgettable. An exception was my Cuban sandwich which was memorable in a bad way. What finally arrived was a ham and cheese sandwich. There was no roast pork. There were no pickles, mayo (which I realize is controversial), or mustard. The sandwich had not been pressed or grilled. I had a bite then sent it back once I realized what I had.

Frankly, I was a bit embarrassed to have brought my friends here.

We may try La Rumba again. It would probably be fine for drinks and masitas.
​

I do put more time and effort into reviewing places I like and talking about them here and elsewhere. I think that's a natural tendency for most people.

I also try really hard not just to say someplace was "simply the best", "to die for", or other superlatives without providing specific reasons or examples. To me, superlatives aren't descriptions. "Tender" can be good for some dishes, but it's not the most important thing to me, though others often seem to view "tenderness" as the key factor in reviewing a restaurant. I also try to be specific in saying what I like because my preferences might not match those of others and something that matches my expectations might mean it's bad for others.

One thing I'm struggling to get my head around right now is how polarizing El Palomar seems to be. We absolutely love it. It's rapidly become one of our go-to favorites for dinner and drinks. So far, I love just about everything about it, right down to the walls. Yet seemingly others hate it.

 

[cvchief]

We can't even get a consensus on which restaurants suck!

 

[Lorenzoid]

I rarely give any weight to Tripadvisor restaurant reviews, because it's difficult to know what the reviewer's background is. Same reason I don't consult TA for dive op reviews but rather use SB. I have to wonder whether some yokel from the Midwest complaining about burritos in Mexico has any clue. I am going to make work of reading all of @mstevens' Coz restaurant reviews, though.

 

[mstevens]

We can't even get a consensus on which restaurants suck!

Yeah. Plus, the ironclad rule that "all threads in the Cozumel section of Scubaboard eventually turn into restaurant recommendations" seems to hold even for a thread that's explicitly intended to be the opposite of restaurant recommendations.

 

[lionfish-eater]

I rarely give any weight to Tripadvisor restaurant reviews, because it's difficult to know what the reviewer's background is. Same reason I don't consult TA for dive op reviews but rather use SB. I have to wonder whether some yokel from the Midwest complaining about burritos in Mexico has any clue. I am going to make work of reading all of @mstevens' Coz restaurant reviews, though.

We yokels in the midwest have some of the best Mexican restaurants in the US. The Mexicans originally came to pick crops, but they stayed to raise families and open businesses including restaurants, law firms, medical offices, etc.

 

[Lorenzoid]

We yokels in the midwest have some of the best Mexican restaurants in the US. The Mexicans originally came to pick crops, but they stayed to raise families and open businesses including restaurants, law firms, medical offices, etc.

Okay, okay, I fell into the trap of using the middle of America to represent "the average American." There are a lot of Mexicans and Mexican restaurants, grocery stores, etc., here in Atlanta, too, but that doesn't mean the average Atlantan on Tripadvisor has any clue about Mexican food. You should see how highly they rate some awful Tex-Mex places and mostly ignore places that don't serve any Tex-Mex. To be fair, I should have said "the average non-Mexican visitor to Cozumel." No particular slight to Midwesterners intended. I will take TA's Cozumel restaurant reviews from foreign visitors with a grain of sal.

 

[DjDiverDan]

We yokels in the midwest have some of the best Mexican restaurants in the US. The Mexicans originally came to pick crops, but they stayed to raise families and open businesses including restaurants, law firms, medical offices, etc.

I used to think that way, too. I grew up in Galesburg, Illinois, and it had a big Mexican-American population, a lot of Hispanic families that came up to work on the railroads and in Galesburg's big Horse and Mule trade pre-Civil War and stayed, and even more that came when industrial plants became big employers. And it had Mexican restaurants that I thought were good - UNTIL I moved to Texas and discovered what GREAT Mexican food could taste like.

 

[El Graduado]

AI thought I'd throw in a few definitions of the cuts of beef people were talking about on this thread: Arrachera, fajitas, suadero, skirt steak, and flank steak.

Suadero (a contracted version of sudadero) means “sweat-blanket” or “saddle blanket,” but is now the colloquial term for an oddly smooth-textured piece of meat cut from an area between the upper leg and the stomach of a cow or steer. It is often grilled and then chopped-up to be served in tacos in Cozumel.

Arrachera is the cow’s diaphragm, the muscle that separates its chest cavity from its belly cavity. In the US it’s called the “skirt.” It is not the same as “flank” steak, which is a part of the abdominal muscles of the cow. Skirt steak is divided into two parts, the “inside skirt” and the “outside skirt.” The outside skirt is normally what you get when you order arrachera in Cozumel. This tough piece of muscle needs to be marinated in some kind of meat-tenderizer in order to make it chewable. It is also served cut across the grain. The piece of diaphragm gets its name from its similarity in looks (and texture!) to an arrachera, a regional name for a saddle cinch, the belt that goes underneath the belly of a horse and is used to keep the saddle from falling off.

Beef Fajitas are the Tex-Mex version of either grilled flank or skirt steak, which are served cut into strips and served on a hot cast iron griddle. In Cozumel it is almost always skirt.
.

 

[scorpiofish]

Some of the worst places are long gone. (maybe not a coincidence) The worst food I've ever experienced were at the all-inclusive places. There was the fly covered buffet at Hotel Cozumel that caused violent illness to half the group. I was trying to figure out what one of the items was. The card in front of the tray said, "Beef Meat". It wasn't as good as it sounded. The old Reef Club used to have some pretty awful food in its main dining area.

One of the worst meals was a New Years Eve deal at Prima's when it was on top of El Cantil. You would have thought we would avoid Prima's after a roach confrontation at their original spot.

 

[mstevens]

The card in front of the tray said, "Beef Meat". It wasn't as good as it sounded.

Not sure how long it's going to take to get all the coffee off my monitor, or out of my sinuses.