The food is safe and good and very affordable and the ambiance is pleasant with brightly painted walls.
Below is the hot buffet for dinner, which always has beans and rice and a couple entrees
The cold buffet section has several salads.
Here are some more salad fixins
And there is always some nice fresh juice. The proprietors have photos of their Asian guru near the cash register, and also have a single madonna image, which the monks pictured below it seem to find humorous.
When you stop eating, the friendly staff will bring you a dessert such as this coffee cake.
Once arriving in San Blas, I had only a few restaurants to chose from. My bungalow held an info binder suggesting some places to eat, mostly the same ones mentioned in travel books that include San Blas (some don't cover the town at all). The first one I tried was Wakame, the only Asian restaurant in town.
I asked the waitress what vegetarian food was available, not usually a problem at Chinese restaurants in the states. She suggested a broccoli chow mein.
This was a large serving and hot from the kitchen, but the noodles were plain spaghetti and they were just boiled, not fried. Not so good.
The next place I tried was Wala Wala, right near the plaza or zocalo.
The waiter here spoke good English, the ambiance was good and there was some interesting and apparently authentic Huichol art for sale. Some chips and salsa were nice.
My vegetarian enchiladas were not so good though. The veggies within seemed to be mainly frozen broccoli.
For my next meal I splurged and went to El Delfin, the expensive restaurant inside the expensive birding lodge Garza Canela. This restaurant has a Cordon Bleu trained chef and is considered one of the finest eateries in Mexico.
There was only one vegetarian offering on the menu, an excellent pear salad with gorgonzola, thin fried onions on top, circled by zucchini slices and cashews. I would eat this salad every day, no problem.
The next day I went to the beach where there is a row of palapa restaurants geared toward tourists. Seafood is the featured fixin' here, but I went with what would become my go-to selection for the rest of the trip: quesadillas. These were always the same simple corn tortillas with white cheese, but worked okay when spruced up with some salsa and guacamole and accompanied by cerveza.
Banana bread (pan de platano) is a traditional food in San Blas, but this stand
is said to have the finest in town in town including flavors such as pineapple and chocolate.
My next quesadilla experience was at La Isla restaurant (aka Tony's) that is usually considered the second best in town, but is clearly several steps below El Delfin.
La Isla is primarily a seafood restaurant as evidenced by the seashell decor.
The quesadillas and guacamole here were nothing special.
There is a restaurant in San Blas called McDonald's but it is not of the American fast food chain. The chips and guacamole here were pretty good and the quesadillas had a special Mexican cheese called panela which was a nice deviation from the norm.
Eventually, since I was having no digestional difficulties, I braved this eatery on the zocalo that was not mentioned in any of the literature.
The quesadillas themselves were typically simple, but there was no extra charge to dress them up with guacamole, carrots, beans, and a variety of salsas. Good deal!
My final meal was at the airport in Puerto Vallarta at the same restaurant I went to two years earlier while waiting for my flight. I got some veggie enchiladas and mozzarella sticks with a Coca-Cola Light. Maybe I'll be back again in a couple years....
